A Broadway Ticket Primer

Luckily you have a few other options:

Scattered single seats may be available. But Telecharge and Ticketmaster may not tell you unless you ask.

Standing-room tickets may be available for sold-out performance. Go to Playbill.com's Insider Info section (on the lower right of the home page) to see if shows you want to see offer this.

A hotel concierge may be able to obtain tickets through a broker (for big bucks).

The Actors' Fund ( http://www.actorsfund.org/ ), Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation ( http://www.cancerresearchfund.org/ ) and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS ( http://store.yahoo.com/broadwaycares/caretix.html ) all have dibs on a few select house seats at almost all Broadway theaters and sell them at double the face value -- but you can deduct the amount over face value on your income tax as a charitable contribution.

Splurge and treat yourself to tickets from Broadway Inner Circle, which offers VIP seating for nine shows; prices are high, but include concierge service and, in many theaters, a private entrance. Tickets are available for "Hairspray," "Sweet Charity," "The Producers," "Movin' Out," "Chicago," "Doubt," "Jersey Boys," "Sweeney Todd" and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular; prices range from $180 for Radio City matinees to $301.25 for "Jersey Boys."

Try the free classified site craigslist ( http://www.craigslist.com/ ; click on "new york," then go to "for sale" and click on "tickets"). You might find better deals than those listed above, but they tend to disappear fast. For example, we found the same Saturday-after-Thanksgiving mezzanine seats for "Wicked" for $13 less, but when we rechecked a few minutes later, they were gone.

Step 4: Once in New York

Three things you can do at the box office and nowhere else:

Buy full-price tickets at face value with no service charge.

Buy unused house seats and unsold premium seats at regular orchestra prices. House seats are reserved for theater people and VIPs, and premium seats are prime orchestra spots designated for sale at double price and up. Unneeded and unsold seats are released to the box office 48 hours, 24 hours or two hours before curtain, depending on the policy of the theater.

Buy $20 to $30 student "rush" and standing-room-only tickets. Some theaters dispense them by lottery, others on a first-come, first-served basis. Playbill's Web site has a rundown on which theaters offer them and their policies; click on Insider Info (at the bottom right of the home page).

Finally, there are the time-honored TKTS booths. The two sites, at Times Square and the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan, are operated by the Theatre Development Fund ( http://www.tdf.org/tkts ), a nonprofit service organization for the performing arts. They sell same-day-only tickets to selected shows for 25, 35 or 50 percent off, plus a $3 service charge. They accept cash and traveler's checks only. The caveats are that many of the shows offered are past their prime or are too new to have generated much buzz.

The Times Square booth at 47th Street and Broadway begins selling for evening performances daily at 3 p.m., Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 10 a.m. and Sunday matinees at 11 a.m. The booth closes at showtime.

The South Street Seaport location (at the corner of Front and John streets, the rear of the Resnick/Prudential Building at 199 Water St.) opens at 11 a.m. daily and closes at 6 p.m. weekdays, 7 p.m. Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays. Matinee seats here are sold the day before the show. Lines at this location tend to be shorter.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out what's available on a given day is to stand in line. You can, however, check the Theatre Development Fund's site to see what was selling at the booths the previous week.

Sharon Isch has been making regular treks to Broadway since before Lily Tomlin went there searching for intelligent life in the universe. Next on her list: Rosemary Harris in Ariel Dorfman's "The Other Side" and Gabriel Byrne in O'Neill's "A Touch of the Poet."