Pitt Arts brings culture to students for cheap with Cheap Seats

Do those upcoming productions of The Sleeping Beauty ballet or Stomp look enticing to you,… Do those upcoming productions of The Sleeping Beauty ballet or Stomp look enticing to you, though the steep ticket prices are making you cower behind your not-so-full wallet? Pitt Arts and the Cheap Seats program may be the bait to lure you out of financial fear.

Cheap Seats allows students — as well as graduate students, faculty and staff — to purchase tickets to shows and cultural events at deep discounts while retaining independence over their transportation and dining decisions, unlike the totally managed experience offered by the Arts Encounters program. Eleven arts organizations participate in the program.

To purchase tickets, students can fill out a form at the Pitt Arts office on the ninth floor of the William Pitt Union, buy online through the Pitt Arts website or do all their ticket shopping at once during Attack of the Cheap Seats.

Attack of the Cheap Seats is not, as one might initially suspect, a bad sci-fi film, but a 10-day event during which students can buy tickets from multiple organizations at once on a single form. The program kicks off on Sept. 9 from noon to 2 p.m. in the WPU assembly room. There will be booths representing the opera, Pittsburgh Public Theater, CLO Cabaret, ballet, cultural trust and symphony.

Often booths bring samples of their wares, so to speak: opera singers and ballet dancers. Lunch will also be provided. The Attack of the Cheap Seats program continues until Sept. 17, after which students can continue to purchase Cheap Seats either outside of the Pitt Arts office or online through the Pitt Arts website, albeit for one event at a time.

Cheap Seats tickets are held under the student’s name at each venue’s Will Call window.

Pitt sophomore Paulina Gonzales used the Cheap Seats program three times last year.

“The program was really easy to use, very straightforward. And I love that the tickets are waiting for you at Will Call — it’s really convenient,” Gonzales said.

Of the more than 13,000 tickets sold last year, Pitt Arts director Annabelle Clippinger said she can count the number of problems students have had with ticket pick-ups on four fingers.

Christy Savage, a Pitt sophomore, said that “sometimes the seats are pretty far away, but for what you’re paying you really can’t complain.”

Clippinger echoed that sentiment, adding that many of the smaller participating venues “don’t have a bad seat in the house.”

The deadlines for purchasing tickets through Cheap Seats are usually one week or 10 days prior to the show. Clippinger recommends buying even sooner, if possible, because the best availability goes to the first tickets processed. The maximum number of tickets students can purchase per event varies from four to eight, though some might be as few as two. Students can bring people unaffiliated with the University as long as the student buys the tickets and attends the event.

The discount students receive depends on the cost of the production. Some tickets can be discounted more than 60 percent off the average price. Clippinger negotiates with group sales representatives to keep prices down.

“One of the things I’m very concerned with is that the tickets stay truly cheap,” she said.

There will also be six Pitt Nights this year, events which allow the entire Pitt community to experience the Arts Encounters usually reserved for the undergraduates — albeit with a modest price tag instead of free, including transportation, dessert reception and the opportunity to meet the artists. Clippinger chooses which events will be Pitt Nights based on their popularity, a skill she’s proven as evidenced by the five busloads full of Pitt students, faculty and staff who attended a symphony featuring violinist Sarah Chang last year.

This year’s Pitt Nights will kick off on Friday, Sept. 11, with the CLO Cabaret’s “8-Track: The Sounds of the 70s.”