Studio Arena Theatre Upgrades Technology to Tessitura

Executive Director Finds "State of the Art" Solution With Tessitura Software

Buffalo, NY and New York City, NY January 8, 2003 - A Buffalo institution for 38 years, Studio Arena Theatre is one of New York state's largest producing theatres, attracting the nation's finest directors, designers and actors from the contemporary theatre to create work of the highest standards. In selecting Tessitura, Studio Arena Theatre joins numerous leading North American arts organizations including The Metropolitan Opera, Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, City Center, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Opera, Houston Ballet and the Santa Fe Opera.

Studio Arena Executive Director, Ken Neufeld indicated that Studio Arena was able to secure foundation funding to license Tessitura in order to advance their technology and improve customer service and operations. "It's a state of the art product for customer relations management," Neufeld said. "Tessitura will allow us to maximize revenue potential from every customer contact."

Tessitura, originally developed by The Metropolitan Opera for its own use, was implemented in 1998 and is now widely used in the arts field. Smeeta Sharon, who is responsible for Business Operations at the Met, noted that "We are very pleased that Studio Arena Theatre elected Tessitura for their operations. They join a growing number of arts organizations who are able to utilize the advanced functionality of Tessitura for box office operations, subscriptions, marketing, development, reporting and most importantly, customer relations. The Met established a subsidiary, Impresario L.L.C. in order to share Tessitura under license with other arts organizations and each new licensee has been able to contribute new ideas for ongoing enhancement of this advanced application."

About Tessitura
Tessitura is an enterprise software application that enables an integrated approach to "constituent management" for arts organizations. Using a single database of information, the system empowers the user organization to record, track and manage all contacts with its constituents, conduct highly targeted and cost-efficient marketing and fund raising appeals, handle all ticketing and membership transactions and provide detailed and flexible performance reports. Besides seamlessly providing efficient business, ticketing and development department operations, a key benefit of the system is its ability for relationship managers to have a full view of each constituent - their history, preferences and all contacts with the institution. Tessitura is owned by Impresario, L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Metropolitan Opera.