What is Curtn?

Curtn is a performance archive for live theater. You can log shows you've seen, write reviews, build lists, follow other people whose taste you trust, and browse pages for venues, production companies, and artists.

If you've used Letterboxd for films or RateYourMusic for albums, the shape is familiar. The big difference is that live performance is ephemeral — a run closes, the production never tours, the cast goes on to other things. Curtn exists so the record doesn't disappear with the run.

Anyone who goes to the theater. Audiences who want a place to keep track of what they've seen. Artists who want a public record of their work. Researchers, critics, students, and history-keepers who want something better than a half-remembered Playbill stack.

Curtn skews toward live theater in the broadest sense — Broadway and Off-Broadway, regional, fringe, devised work, dance, opera, and experimental performance all belong here.

The basic objects on Curtn are shows, the productions that stage them (runs and performances), and the people, companies, and venues attached to those runs.

You can mark performances as seen, rate them, review them, and group them into lists. Your feed surfaces what people you follow are logging and writing. Venues, companies, and artists each have a dedicated page that anyone can help keep accurate — and that the person or organization in question can claim and steward directly.

• Not a ticketing platform. Curtn doesn't sell tickets, take payments, or replace your relationship with a box office. Where helpful, pages link out to where you can actually buy seats.
• Not primarily a marketing channel. Artists, companies, and venues are welcome to share their work here — but the center of gravity is the archive and the audience, not press copy.
• Not a moderated news site. Reviews are personal — yours alone — and the platform doesn't aggregate them into an authoritative score.

A lot of what you see on Curtn was put there by users like you — logging a show that didn't exist yet, adding a cast member, correcting a date. Some pages start as imports from public sources (theater listings, programs, press kits) so the archive isn't empty on day one.

All edits are recorded in a public edit history. If a page looks wrong, you can fix it directly (when it's unclaimed) or propose a change (when it's claimed). Bad edits can be reverted.

Curtn is a small, independent project — currently built and maintained by one person. It's not venture-funded and isn't owned by a larger company, which keeps the focus on the archive instead of growth metrics. Down the line we may run modest, on-topic ads — most likely letting artists promote their own work to relevant audiences — but the experience won't be ad-driven.