Live theater is not too expensive. Almost anyone can afford a ticket, and students can attend for next to nothing with a valid student ID. All it takes is planning ahead.

        Broadway in Cincinnati — Check out the Cloud Club, the upper reaches of the Aronoff's Procter & Gamble Hall. Seventy-five percent of the available tickets are subscribed, but there are some left for Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. A Thursday subscription is $85, $125 for weekend evenings. You will have to invest in a good pair of binoculars. But you can pay to upgrade shows of your choice, no charge for the service.

        (To date, 10 percent of Cloud Club tickets have been sold via the Internet, suggesting a younger audience.)

        When Rent returns to town, 36 seats in the front rows will be held back for $20 day-of-performance sales. (That's a tradition.) They go on sale two hours before curtain, but you might want to line up early and make a day of it.

        Broadway (241-2345) also has day-of-show half-price student rush seats for some performances.

        Playhouse in the Park — Take advantage of half-price day-of-show tickets, available at the box office (11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday). That brings an adult ticket down to as little as $16.

        Best chance for tickets: a weeknight early in a show's run. Keep your Playhouse schedule handy.

        Playhouse has a “student/senior rush” policy. Students can purchase one ticket in person 15 minutes before curtain. Seniors can buy up to two tickets two hours before performance, in person or by phone. In both cases, available seats are $13-$15.

        Student subscriptions to the five-show Marx season are $60 (421-3888).

        Ensemble Theatre — With tickets climbing to $28 this season, the best deal on the mainstage season is Friends Night Out, the Tuesday preview performance. Twenty bucks buys dinner (pasta/pizza/salad buffet starting at 5:30 p.m. at the nearby BarrelHouse Brewing Company) and a show.

$10 and under
               • One of last season's real steals was the $8 (if you can afford a movie . . .) ticket on alteractive, the Monday night series at Playhouse that runs January-March.

        This season the adult price goes up to $10, but students can still get in for $6. Great entertainment, cheap tickets.

        • Consider trying ETC's Off-Center offerings, where the fare is edgier than the mainstage series, and tickets are still $10.

        • The price doesn't get better than College-Conservatory of Music's Studio series at University of Cincinnati, where admission is free. Not surprisingly, tickets go quickly. Reservations are taken starting the Monday of performance week (556-4183).

        This year's line-up is tres hip and includes local premieres As Bees in Honey Drown and Stop Kiss along with Song and Dance, Nine, She Loves Me and Luigi Pirandello's world theater classic Six Characters in Search of an Author.

        This year CCM is instituting a “student rush” for Saturday matinees for all mainstage shows. Tickets will be $8, available 15 minutes before curtain.

        • Northern Kentucky University theater tickets top out at $10. Senior citizens pay $8, students $5. The subscription discount works out to one free show. Another advantage: free parking.

        • Both Ovation, which produces in the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater, and Know Theatre Tribe, based at Gabriel's Corner in Over-the-Rhine, offer Pay-What-You-Can previews. (Ovation's pay-what-you-can for Fellowship of the Rings is Sept. 20.)

        • Stage First makes its best offer for the student set. Tickets for Thursday night Classics in Education are $10 (241-7469).

        • Learn to love staged readings. Cincinnati has three series:

        Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative has monthly readings of work by local playwrights at the Aronoff's Fifth Third Theater.

        Theatre of the Mind will explore six plays by award-winning playwrights never seen in Cincinnati in its “Discover America” series at Ensemble.

        Women's Theatre Initiative has scheduled four readings at Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival between October and early December.

        Admission $5 to all.

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