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Schedule classes, workshops and rehearsals, track LAMDA and other exam progress, take bookings and payments online, and sell tickets for your end-of-term productions.
AMES keeps your classes, rehearsals, students' grades, bookings and payments in one connected record, from youth theatre workshops to performing arts training. You can import LAMDA's published grade structures, put rehearsals on the same timetable as classes and, with the events module, sell show tickets online, so more of your time goes on the craft.
UK Governing Body
London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA)
Typical Pricing
£7-£15 per class
Class Size
10-20 students
Staging an end-of-term production means juggling far more than rehearsals and line-learning. Props need sourcing, cataloguing and assigning to scenes, while set-building has to fit venue access windows that are often limited to the final fortnight. Scripted shows need performing rights cleared well before the first performance, and missed deadlines can force a last-minute script change. Programmes need cast biographies, headshots and sponsor logos collated in time for proofing. Front-of-house volunteer rotas must cover tickets, ushering and interval refreshments. Tech crew for lighting, sound and stage management adds another layer, especially when crew members are also performing. Without one central record, critical tasks surface too late to fix.
Drama schools often teach students from early childhood to eighteen, and timetabling across that spread involves far more than avoiding room clashes. Safeguarding requirements govern how age groups can be mixed, with younger children needing separate waiting and changing areas from teenagers. Content matters too: a devised piece exploring mature themes cannot share a workshop slot with a junior group, and parental consent may be needed before younger students work with age-restricted material. Families want siblings in back-to-back sessions, but age-appropriate grouping and staffing ratios limit flexibility. Every timetable change triggers safeguarding checks, room changes and messages to parents.
LAMDA offers distinct streams, such as Acting, Musical Theatre and Speaking Verse and Prose, each with its own syllabus, marking criteria and entry deadlines. Different streams at the same grade ask for different pieces, so preparation varies from student to student. Paired entries add coordination, as both students must be equally prepared and available on the day. Recorded submissions need setting up, checking and tracking against the exam board's requirements. Examiner visits must fit your venue availability, and exam boards running on different calendars mean overlapping preparation windows. Tracking readiness across many students sitting different grades in different streams overwhelms any manual system.
When a show is in production, attendance matters in ways that go beyond normal class registers. Understudies need enough rehearsal time to be genuinely ready, not just familiar with the script, so their attendance needs watching separately from the principal cast. Ensemble numbers affect blocking and staging: if several members of a chorus scene are absent, the choreography breaks down and rehearsal time is lost to re-spacing. Commitment forms for show season set expectations, but enforcing them without clear attendance data is difficult. Dress rehearsal attendance is non-negotiable for most schools, yet chasing confirmations by hand takes hours.
Drama schools face a scheduling challenge that almost no other children's activity encounters: the need to layer intensive production rehearsals over an existing timetable of regular classes without burning out students, staff, or parents. This guide covers practical approaches to scene-based scheduling, cast call sheets, and parent coordination.
A drama school production involves hundreds of moving parts, and the schools that run them smoothly are the ones with systems rather than heroics. This guide covers how to build production management systems for prop inventory, licensing compliance, digital programmes, box office integration, and post-production archiving.
Staging a production is the pinnacle of any drama school's year, but the logistics behind it can overwhelm even experienced providers. This guide covers every backstage element from props sourcing and set construction through to licensing, programme printing, front-of-house operations, and tech crew management.
Drama schools generate more parent communication than almost any other children's activity. Between rehearsal schedules, costume requirements, script distribution, performance logistics, and the inevitable last-minute changes, the volume of information flowing between school and home is relentless. This guide covers how to centralise that communication through a parent portal that saves time for everyone.
Drama schools frequently need to timetable sessions that bring together children of different ages, whether for ensemble productions, musical theatre workshops, or simply because demand does not justify separate classes for every year group. This guide covers the safeguarding, practical, and scheduling challenges of mixed-age timetabling.
Running a successful LAMDA programme is not just about preparing individual students for individual exams. It requires a systematic approach to tracking progression across grades, managing piece selection to avoid repetition, assessing readiness before entry, and using results data to improve your teaching. This guide covers the operational side of managing LAMDA progression at scale.
LAMDA examinations are a cornerstone of structured drama education in the UK. This guide covers how to prepare students across the Acting, Musical Theatre, and Verse and Prose streams, manage self-taping submissions, coordinate paired and group entries, and schedule examiner visits efficiently.
Drama schools operate in a regulatory environment that is more complex than many activity providers realise. Beyond standard DBS checks, drama schools must navigate chaperone licensing for performances, licence-to-perform requirements for children in public shows, and specific rules about physical contact, emotional content, and the unique power dynamics of director-student relationships. This guide covers every compliance area a drama school must address.
Drama schools deal with a more complex range of fees than most children's activity providers. Term fees, production levies, costume contributions, workshop deposits, LAMDA exam fees, and the occasional bursary create an administrative tangle that manual processes simply cannot manage at scale. This guide covers how to automate your payment collection and eliminate the hours spent chasing unpaid invoices.
Attendance in a drama school is not just an administrative exercise. It directly affects casting decisions, understudy readiness, production quality, and the experience of every other student in the room. This guide covers practical approaches to tracking attendance, managing commitment, and handling the inevitable absences that disrupt rehearsal schedules.
Running a children's drama school combines creative fulfilment with genuine business potential. This guide covers qualifications, exam board registration, venue requirements, curriculum design, performance licensing, and the practical steps to building a thriving drama programme.
Build your weekly timetable of workshops, technique classes and ensemble sessions, then add production rehearsals as one-off sessions as show season approaches, on the same timetable so clashes show before families are told. Each class has its own capacity, levels can carry an age range, families book and pay online in AMES Connect, new students can book a trial class, and full classes offer the waiting list.
Import LAMDA's published grade structures, from Acting and Devising Drama to Speaking Verse and Prose and Musical Theatre, into your levels, or set up Trinity grades or your own milestones. Teachers record progress and notes for each student in AMES Teach, and families see the current grade, what comes next and their certificates in AMES Connect. AMES does not submit exam entries to exam boards.
Collect term fees by GoCardless Direct Debit, and workshop and holiday course payments by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay through AMES Pay. Charge per session, per term or with credits, apply sibling and other discounts under the rules you set, and let failed payments retry automatically with the parent told. Every payment sits with the family's bookings, so you can see who has paid at a glance.
AMES Connect gives families bookings, payments, receipts, progress and messages in one app. Rehearsal dates and show-day details can go out as noticeboard posts and push notifications, parents keep health and medical notes current, and they can report absences and message your team without searching through email threads.
With the AMES events module, you can publish performances, set ticket types and prices, sell tickets online in AMES Connect, and check audiences in on the night from a door list or QR code. Rehearsals sit on the same timetable as your classes, and messages keep the cast's families informed. AMES does not manage props, scripts, programmes or performing rights.
Record each teacher's qualifications, DBS check, safeguarding training and first aid with expiry dates and the certificate uploaded as evidence, and see everything that has expired or is due to on one page. Require a qualification for the classes that need it, so an unqualified assignment is blocked or flagged, and record incidents and safeguarding concerns from the office or from AMES Teach.
See how AMES can automate bookings, payments, and communication for your drama business.
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