Head count, please! No SRO seating.

Part of the House Mangers' job is to ensure the safety of the attending patrons. If your customers survive the show, they might come back and buy another ticket! Each Assembly Occupancy" (that's building code speak for "theatre, auditorium, venue, show space, etc.) must have the maximum legal occupancy clearly posted. This means that you shouldn't sell 30,000 tickets for a space designed for 10,000 people. It leaves 20,000 rather frustrated and sometimes angry fans looking for a place to vent their concerns. This recently happened at a major new sports venue. The management team decided to ignore the Fire Marshal's occupancy limits, and the resulting crush of people invaded the spaces reserved for regular seating ticket holders. The customers that pre-paid for their tickets were none to happy. Bathrooms were overloaded, long waits at concession stands, and many that did not ever get to see the game.
Further information can be gleaned by reading the article in the Dallas Morning News:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092209dnmetpartypasses.4026d63.html and this article on Yahoo: http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-cowboys-partypass&prov=ap&type=lgns

Auditorium Safety Webinar Now Available at SchoolDude

These folks have graciously invited me to co-present a webinar about auditorium safety management. The event was live on Nov 18, 2009 and titled "Facility Masters Webinar Series: Auditorium and Theatre Safety".  It has been archived and can be viewed at http://discover.schooldude.com/forms/2009-11-RY-FM-MD-AuditoriumSafety.

At the SchoolDude web site you can watch and listen to the presentation by Host Roger Young, New Mexico Deputy Fire Marshal Ray Wolf, myself, and SchoolDude Mayor David Kornegay.  There are also many document and presentation downloads available.

Depending upon your area of theatre involvement, some aspects of this webinar may not seem interesting, however, please be patient and take the time to watch and listen all the way through it. There are points of information throughout it that relate directly to the theatre safety issues.  Please pass this link on to your school maintenance and management officials, too, so that they can see how facility management relates to theatre safety.