Welcome to Spectra.Theater!

Spectra.Theater is a network directly connecting every artist and community making theater around the country (and eventually the world) to each other. Spectra users can access detailed information about productions inclusive of cast, crew, companies, and media (when available).

Spectra’s unique database has been enriched directly through data partnerships with producing theaters, publishers, and license houses, including MTI, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, Concord Theatricals, Broadway Licensing Group, the Open Broadway Database, and more. Spectra’s vast archive of past, current, and upcoming U.S. professional, stock, amateur, and school productions is a comprehensive and inclusive database of titles, venues, performers, writers, directors, designers, production team members, administrators, marketing materials, and more.

Additionally, with our recent acquisition of the Internet Off-Broadway Database (iobdb.com), we now house the most comprehensive collection of Off-Broadway records currently on the web.

We believe in the somatic power of theater. In today’s ever divided and lonesome digital society, sharing stories, space, and time together with live community is essential. This makes theater the perfect starting place for Spectra’s digital movement.

Spectra has added the Lucille Lortel Theatre’s Off-Broadway archive to www.spectra.theater. For the last 23 years, the Lortel’s database has been the trusted catalogue for shows produced Off-Broadway, and with this new partnership, the site is officially retired and all users will be automatically redirected to www.spectra.theater. All data previously found on IOBDB can now be discovered on Spectra.Theater.

As the Lucille Lortel Theatre shared in its announcement of this change:

“We’re excited and relieved by our partnership with Spectra. We always felt it was important to ensure the history of Off-Broadway would not disappear. That is why we created the IOBDB. But after more than two decades of building and maintaining this free service, when the Spectra team reached out and shared their mission with us, we knew putting our data in their hands was the right choice. With the increasing demands of the digital world, and the cost and complexities of keeping up the database, Spectra is the best way to ensure the history of Off-Broadway continues to be available long into the future. With Spectra being a tech company, this new partnership opens up future possibilities for the entire theater industry, and far beyond preservation. Spectra’s unprecedented concept of connecting the different aspects of theater: the play, the characters, the creatives, the production credits, the venues and the artists, gives room for technology to support all theater communities.”

Make an account

Create an account and share details about yourself. With your new account, we invite you to join our community on Spectra:

Explore.Theater

Explore our Library of shows, artists, and communities on Spectra. Our database includes Currently Running and Archived information for Broadway, Off-Broadway, Regional, Educational and Community, theater productions. Additionally, if you aren’t finding what you are looking for, you can...

Search.Theater

Connect.Theater

Currently in a development, and soon arriving in beta form, Spectra’s Portfolio feature will allow users to gather, enrich and connect with their entire lifetime of theatrical credits, eventually seeking to connect directly to your Artist presence in Spectra’s production database. With the Portfolio you will have the first of its kind digital interactive resume connecting you to every collaborator that you have ever worked with and making you an artist discoverable for future collaborations through Spectra.

We, Spectra’s founders, are the Saunders family, are a family of theater makers and technologists deeply committed to bringing new age tools to an age old art form. Led by Kim, who has a diverse tech background, we are the perfect team to meet Spectra’s goals:

Heath Saunders
Trent Saunders
Alanna Saunders
Claire Saunders
Kim Saunders
The Saunders Collective

With a list of credits to our names spanning Broadway, Off-Broadway, Touring, Regional, University, High School, and Community theater, we are production experts and artists with a keen eye towards the future of theater in our society. With the additional intersection provided by decades of experience in technology and database design, we are perfectly positioned to build the digital tools to support artists and audiences alike.

We started working on Spectra in 2020 when in-person gathering (obviously including theater) was shut down, and we realized that there was no online space that was dedicated to any and all types of theater makers - professional, amateur, aspiring, and fans. We watched Hamilton on Disney+ and discovered that there was no immediate digital link to our next favorite theater show.

Although we work regularly in this industry, on Broadway, regional and international levels, and as educators, we saw a gap, a lack of access. On one hand we see theater as a unique but luxury medium creating community and spaces of collective effervescence. And on the other hand we see the limitless digital ecosystem where access has the potential to be democratized for all participants. There has to be a way to help the two work more fully together.

Spectra is starting a new technological revolution to bring theater into the digital age.

Spectra seeks to build the single digital connection point between all levels of theater. We have a lot of work ahead of ourselves to make this platform into the valuable tool for theater lovers everywhere. Our new kind of digital playground will support theater enthusiasts of any background. We are happy you are along for the ride, because theater only happens together.