Audience Coordinator

As I mentioned earlier, one of my jobs as an Associate Producer was to be an audience coordinator. Basically, I was in charge of publicizing the in-studio taping and booking a full house. The task started out well; I contacted every program coordinator, PR person, and high ranking school official I could think of. Luckily, I also had an assistant who e-mailed production offices and followed up on printing tickets. We publicized like crazy: Facebook, Twitter, listservs, etc. We got the class to reserve a set amount of tickets, and the student body e-mailed us like crazy. My assistant and I devised a color coding system for marking the different groups of tickets: class, actors, VIPs, and general admission. Everything was going swell. Then, show night happened.

Everything was set up: stanchions with row markings, labeled tickets, and a table to hand out tickets. I was told I would have a PA and a few classmates to help out. Great. People showed up, got their tickets, we had them wait in the lobby, then we set them to the theatre lobby at 4:30. At that time, though, we got nervous; many people didn't show up or ended up canceling their reservations. To make matters worse, I contacted the general audience to let them know that we were overbooked but still encouraged them to come, stand by, and sit in the holding area until we could pull them for the studio audience. Well, that failed because people equate over book with "don't bother showing up." FAIL. Oh, and then was the audience load-in.

It all worked in my head: I'd line people up by rows in front of the stanchions, I'd lead them in one row at a time, and seat them. Well, a few things happened: I didn't get my PA on time. House management was disorganized and delayed load-in for 20 minutes. Moreover, I confused the hell out of people when I attempted to line them up. If I actually had a head attached to my shoulders, I would've moved the stanchions to the front of the theatre and lined people up accordingly. But did I do that? Of course not. I lined people out in front of the production office, and I told them to face me while I counted them off. That didn't work too well, as people wanted to be at the end of the line to sit by the aisle. Folks: it doesn't freaking matter where you sit! People were just confused. I was frustrated. To make matters worse, the house manager assigned to help me clearly didn't want to be there; she told me it was my show and to do what I want. She then walked to the theatre and counted people as they entered. She could've died from boredom. FAIL.

Regardless, I got people seated, mass texted everyone I knew, and seated the extras halfway through the show. When all was said and done, I was only three people short of a full house (despite the fact that I originally overbooked in the first place). The show itself was great, and the audience had a great time; I can hear their laughter now as we're editing the show. Yes, there are things I would've done differently, but given the circumstances that arose, I think I did a pretty good job. I wonder how they deal with audiences in the industry...