One page for the production

The production is what people search for and link to. It has a description, a cast, images, reviews, a trailer and a running time. All of that belongs on one page.

The performances are dates on that page. Making each performance a separate page gives you thirty near-identical pages, none of which is the page anybody wants, and splits your search relevance thirty ways.

Model the run as a rule with an end

Tuesday to Saturday at 19:30 until a closing date is one rule. Add the closing date as UNTIL and the run has a definite end, which matters because a production that appears to run forever is a production nobody feels urgency about.

Dark days are simply days not in the rule. If the theatre is dark on a particular Wednesday for a one-off, that is a cancellation against the series.

Matinees are a second rule, not a longer day

A Saturday matinee at 14:30 alongside the 19:30 is a separate recurrence — FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=SA at 14:30 — attached to the same production. It has a different time, often a different price, and it sells to a different audience.

Trying to express “two performances on Saturdays” inside a single rule leads people into strange configurations that no calendar reads correctly. Two rules is the honest model and it is what your box office already thinks.

The performances that are different

Previews, press night, the signed performance, the relaxed performance, the post-show talk. These are individual occurrences with something extra about them, and they are exactly what per-occurrence exceptions are for — one date that carries its own title or note without becoming a separate production.

If your calendar makes you choose between “all the same” and “thirty separate events”, this is the requirement it fails on, and it is the one theatres hit first.

Booking links per performance

Each performance links to its own slot in the box office, because that is what somebody is buying. The production page therefore needs a list of dates where every date is a link — which is another reason performances should be addressable without each being a full page.

Touring

A touring production plays different venues, and those may be in different timezones. Each date needs its own venue and its own local time; storing everything in the head office's timezone and converting by hand is how a Manchester matinee ends up advertised an hour out.