How would you handle this situation?

Still haven't heard a plan for how you would sort out the people with the wrong tickets and kick them out of the show. Would you march the house management staff through the audience one row at a time to check tickets? Would you march the whole audience out into the lobby and send them back in a second time? How do you handle this without a riot?

Chris15 said:

How might the fact that GT identified that the hirer was a dance studio affect this?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that to me reads kids dance school and that means the audience would have been almost entirely mums, dads, aunties, grandmas and others who are there to see their little darling perform...

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Yes it's a dance school. The 25 extra people are Grandma and Aunt Thelma who drove 150 miles to watch 4 year old Suzy dance in a tutu. They have no interest in getting their money back and are VERY angry at the suggestion that they have done something wrong.

assuming the seating isn't assigned you can't pinpoint the people who aren't actually supposed to be there. The best option is to apologize to the extra people and get them into other seats as long as space isn't an issue. If you absolutely can't get more seats you have to turn them away. offer the refund even if they don't want it, looking at the upside if they are from 150 miles away their anger doesn't affect too much after they leave.

if there was assigned seating, then yes I have seen the house manager march through and check the tickets in question and remove people one by one if their ticket was wrong. No easy way to go about it, and any decision will make people mad.

Well, the 25 extra peoples will have someone else in their seat, so the seats where two people are trying to sit there should be the only seats I would worry about. I would then ask the people who didnt remember what time they paid for get standing room or foldable chairs in the back.

Sorry Chausman, the seats are not assigned so that wouldn't work.

So our house management's solution was, as many of you have already landed on, to dig out some extra chairs. Since it's a black box, we just added a new front row. This made the people who thought they were in the front row mad, but oh well, at least we got everyone in. Unfortunately, the people in the front row were now "on stage" and lit throughout the performance. But what can you do? At least everyone got in and there was no riot.

cdcarter said:

Add folding chairs for the 25 that didn't get seated, and offer them refunds if they desire. Don't unseat people that are already seated, and don't go running around trying to find people with the wrong time on their ticket. Resolve the situation as quickly and happily as possible, let the show start on time.

Then, train your ushers to do their job, and also put some house holds in your ticketing system. Not a full 25, but maybe 10 or so, for situations like this (and for when the chair of your board shows up at the theater and needs 5 seats to a sold out show).

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+1. It creates as little hassle as could be expected considering the situation. As long as whoever the FOH manager is explains the situation to those individuals as politely and apologetically as possible, I feel it alleviates the bad PR on the theater itself. Along with offering folding chairs and possible discounted tickets on another future show, most of those displaced individuals would be understanding and accept that without further issues.

For any ticket holders that didn't accept that it was an honest mistake and the theater attempted to do everything practical within its means to find a viable solution, any "acting out" on their part would likely be seen as childish and irrational.

If they get too crazy, you can always call the gun-toting backup if need be...

Is sitting in the added chairs in front of the existing seating the only option you offered those who had tickets for that performance? That seems like effectively penalizing those who had tickets for that performance, and especially those who got there early, in order to avoid having to deal with those who had made a mistake and that it was apparently assumed would not readily admit to it.

Since you don't have assigned seating then as soon as you realized there was any conflict I would have made an announcement asking people to please verify that their tickets are for that performance. Hopefully most, if not all, would admit to this honest mistake and you could then offer them seats behind or to the sides of the other seating. If that did not clear up all the conflicts then you could ask those who did have tickets for that show if any of them minded sitting in temporary seating.

Or you could take the approach most other businesses take and charge a 'change fee' for anyone who missed the performance for which they had tickets and attended a different performance.

gafftaper said:

Still haven't heard a plan for how you would sort out the people with the wrong tickets and kick them out of the show. Would you march the house management staff through the audience one row at a time to check tickets? Would you march the whole audience out into the lobby and send them back in a second time? How do you handle this without a riot?

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Have "someone" accidentally trip the fire alarm..?

j/k of course..but it does have its own sense of 'hey--that would work'....



-w

One more thing, mildly tangential:

Can those who are in the theatrical industry take the time to learn the difference between isle and aisle. If you don't think it makes a difference, consider these two sentences:

Let's go eat, Virginia.

Let's go eat Virginia.

museav said:

Is sitting in the added chairs in front of the existing seating the only option you offered those who had tickets for that performance? That seems like effectively penalizing those who had tickets for that performance, and especially those who got there early, in order to avoid having to deal with those who had made a mistake and that it was apparently assumed would not readily admit to it.

Since you don't have assigned seating then as soon as you realized there was any conflict I would have made an announcement asking people to please verify that their tickets are for that performance. Hopefully most, if not all, would admit to this honest mistake and you could then offer them seats behind or to the sides of the other seating. If that did not clear up all the conflicts then you could ask those who did have tickets for that show if any of them minded sitting in temporary seating.

Or you could take the approach most other businesses take and charge a 'change fee' for anyone who missed the performance for which they had tickets and attended a different performance.

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Again, unfortunately this was the last performance of a dance studio's rental. It was really clear that the audience didn't care about tickets to future events. They didn't care about being polite. They didn't care about doing the right thing and admitting they didn't have a valid ticket to that performance. They wanted to see 3 year old Suzy dance in a tutu. So although offering a return of money or giving a discount to a future show would be a nice gesture that should be considered, in this case it was pretty much pointless.

There were people upset about us putting out a new front row of chairs but at that point our house management staff really only had the choice of that or to go through every person one at at time checking tickets and kicking out people. Which I think would have made a bad situation much worse.

As Mrs. Footer said, I'm glad this wasn't my problem. I got to kick back, eat my popcorn, and watch the show from the booth.

As I type this, also on our closing night performance, our box office staff has turned our black box into pretty much standing room only. Our solution was to have people who really wanted to sit on the floor in front of the regular audience seating. We were supposed to start fifteen minutes ago and just barely started our show.

gafftaper said:

As Mrs. Footer said, I'm glad this wasn't my problem. I got to kick back, eat my popcorn, and watch the show from the booth.

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The best way this situation can unfold

shiben said:

What Isles? Most Isles are not really a place for extra seating for a central United States performance.

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len said:

One more thing, mildly tangential:

Can those who are in the theatrical industry take the time to learn the difference between isle and aisle. If you don't think it makes a difference, consider these two sentences:

Let's go eat, Virginia.

Let's go eat Virginia.

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I think the tongue in cheek approach by shiben pointed out that some of us do know the difference. Of course this is a homophone and not punctuation error as in the Virginia example.

In any case, you cannot allow seating in the aisles. This could get your facility shut down quickly, especially if they find that this is being intentionally done by your staff and not just the staff being neglectful in stopping patrons from doing this on their own. This is part of the basic operation of a public assembly space, along with proper aisle and exit lighting.

The nice thing with a black box space is that it is flexible. As long as you are within the occupancy limit of the room, you can often add the seating. With the black box that I had managed, the AHJ had set different occupancy limits depending on which configuration we set the room, since the risers could effectively limit certain egress pathways. That would have hindered us in this situation from adding additional seating.

As Mrs. Footer said, I'm glad this wasn't my problem. I got to kick back, eat my popcorn, and watch the show from the booth.

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We did a beach concert years ago with the Beach Boys. The seats were beach chairs with event name printed on it. As part of the ticket price you took the chair with you. It was the first event that they had gone with a national ticketing company, double sold the front row, all VIPs. I got to stay on stage and watch the scramble.

The dance school owner should go to the stage and apologize for the late start and explain the situation.

Then they should ask for volunteers to give up their seat. Aunt Martha may well want to see Suzy dance, but Uncle Edgar might just as soon sit in the lobby and read the paper. The same goes for teenage siblings who got dragged along. After that, if there are just a few folks to go, the dance school owner should offer to host a dinner for whoever volunteers to leave.

The lessons here are:
1.) Think through what might go wrong in advance.
2.) Never be afraid to offer a creative solution. The worst anyone might say is No, but if they accept your solution it's another feather in your cap.

PeterBuchin said:

The dance school owner should go to the stage and apologize for the late start and explain the situation.

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If they were the ones that provided the ushers that did not catch the show time when they seated people then I agree, however if it was venue staff that was at fault, and Gaff said "our ushers", then I would not ask or expect a Client to do this.

PeterBuchin said:

Then they should ask for volunteers to give up their seat. Aunt Martha may well want to see Suzy dance, but Uncle Edgar might just as soon sit in the lobby and read the paper. The same goes for teenage siblings who got dragged along.

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Good point.

PeterBuchin said:

After that, if there are just a few folks to go, the dance school owner should offer to host a dinner for whoever volunteers to leave.

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If some patrons made a mistake and came at the wrong time and some of the venue staff/representatives made a mistake in not checking the time on the tickets, then why should the dance school owner pay for those mistakes? In fact while the patrons may end up directing their anger or dismay at the dance school, it sounds like the venue ushers were most at fault and perhaps it should be the venue compensating the dance school. I don't understand putting the responsibility for the results of the actions of those who made mistakes on to the one party that seemed to not have made a mistake.

I completely understand the desire to arrive at an amicable solution and avoid conflict, I also think it makes sense to not try to 'punish' those who made an honest mistake. But it is not right to ask those who made no mistake to suffer for the actions of those that did. If you ask people to check their tickets and somebody admits they came to the wrong performance then you try to work with them to find some acceptable arrangement. However, if someone is made aware that this is penalizing someone else and still chooses to not admit they are there at the wrong performance, then they have made a conscious choice and their action is no longer an honest mistake. I don't see going out of the way to reward people who won't take responsibility for their mistakes especially if they are aware that it negatively affects others who made no such mistake.

which isles would you have people sat in. the british isles maybe or some other isles somewhere else in the world. it would probably be easier if you sat the extra people in the aisles thus avoiding any expensive plane tickets and foreign accommodation.

Especially for a dance recital, there will be lots of very young siblings in the audience. I have had situations similar to this, and have had small cushions for little tykes to sit on the floor in front of the first row. All the adult patrons were very appreciative of this solution.

Absolutely hate this situation, yet my FOH staff always seems to mess up. Their new solution is to only sell a percentage of tickets online ahead of time and sell another percentage at the door, leaving a few hold seats for board members, family, etc. Pre-bought tickets get seated at 6:45, tickets from the door at 7:00, then the waiting list begins... the remaining seats are seated at 7:20, curtain at 7:30. If you hear the music and you're still in the lobby, then you didn't get seated and get to head home.

Keep in mind, that's a 62 seat theater.

We are thankfully moving into a new space in June. 150 seats for sold tickets, then we have a large balcony with a slightly impeded view for over-sales, special guests, etc.