Front of house counts the audience out at the end of the night with a clicker on each door, and the count is checked against the tickets scanned in. Ours is one over. Every night, whatever the house. The seat sensors say the extra person was in a seat that is not on the plan, at the end of row M, in a space where a seat was removed to make an aisle, and the sensor for that seat was removed with it.
I am the front of house manager at a theatre with eight hundred seats and one more.
The count.
Tickets scanned at the door on the way in. A clicker on each exit on the way out. The two numbers are compared at the end of the night and they agree, or the ushers go through the house with torches, because somebody asleep in the gods or ill in a lavatory is the thing the count is for.
Ours is one over on the way out. Every night. Two hundred in and two hundred and one out. Full house, eight hundred in, eight hundred and one out.
The seat.
The sensors under the seats tell us where everybody sat. On a night with two hundred in, two hundred sensors read occupied, and one more. The one more is in the position the plan calls M nought, which is not a seat. It is the end of row M, on the aisle, where a seat was taken out in 2005 to widen the aisle for the wheelchair positions, and the sensor came out with the seat, and the plan has no seat there.
The system reads a sensor there. It reads occupied from the moment the house opens to the curtain call, and then it reads empty, and a clicker on the nearest exit goes up by one.
What has been checked.
The wiring under row M. There is no sensor. There is a capped cable where the sensor was.
The space at the end of row M, at the curtain call, by me, from the aisle. Carpet. The aisle light. A space wide enough for a seat, with the four bolt holes in the floor filled and carpeted over. And at the call, when the house stands, something stands in that space. The air in it changes height. And it goes along the aisle to the exit with the rest of them, at their pace, and out, and the clicker in the usher's hand goes up by one, and the usher, who is holding the clicker, and who has held it for that exit for years, says she does not press it, that it presses.
The one more.
I went to the archive. The archive is the woman who has been here since she was an usher, and I asked her about M nought, and she said, oh, that was old Mr somebody's seat, and she gave a name, and I asked who he was, and she said, a regular. Every show. Every night of every run, for years, in the same seat, on his own, a season ticket holder from before there were season tickets, and he had died in the seat. In the middle of a show. In the seventies. Nobody had noticed till the end, because he was quiet and he sat still and he was always the last to leave.
He was the last to leave. He always was. The archive said the ushers had used to wait for him. They had used to stand at the exit with the clicker and wait for old Mr somebody to get himself up and along the aisle and out, and click him, and lock up.
He is still the last to leave. And they still click him.
What is done about it.
The count is one over on every report and the reports go to the general manager, who has had the system looked at, and who has been told, by the system's makers, that the system is reading a seat that does not exist and counting a person who does not, and who has written on the report, in pen, ongoing.
What I do.
I run the front of house.
I have told the ushers to wait. It is not a change, because they were waiting already, the way the old ushers did, without knowing why: the exit nearest row M is always the last to close and the usher on it always stands a moment after the last person has gone, with the clicker, and then clicks, and I have told them that is right, that is what we do, we wait for the gentleman.
The seat is coming back. I have put it in the budget as an aisle seat for row M, accessible width, and the general manager has passed it, and the sensor will go in with it, and the plan will have M nought on it, and the system will read a seat that exists, and the count will still be one over, and it will be correct, because he will be in it.
I am going to sell it. One ticket, every night, at the box office, to a name, and leave it on the seat, and if nobody picks it up the seat is his, and if somebody does, then I do not know what happens, and I have decided that a man who has sat through every show in this building for fifty years, alive and otherwise, is entitled to make his own arrangements about the person in his seat.