Sam Freeman

Storytelling | Theatre | Arts Marketing

Seat Wars – Episode II – Social Spacing Fights Back

Hey there! So if you’ve been here before then welcome back and if you’re new well, where have you been. This is a much less wordy blog than usual (which readers of my last blog (click here) will be undoubtedly relieved) – mostly because I’m leading a quiz tonight that promises to be (and this is not hyperbole), The Greatest Quiz Of All Time.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to cement my ideas around social spacing since my last blog (click here for clickbait) and really get my head around what’s a sensible thing to think about. There have been a few people I’ve spoken to who’ve not been looking at any of this for their venue because the sands are shifting so much – I decided that if I know as much as possible about the challenges and complications then I might not have a massive breakdown when rules for reopening come out.

Turns out socially spaced seating is ridiculously complicated to do. You can do some types of spacing technically quite easily, you can some types of spacing communicationally quite easily and you can do some types of spacing experientially quite easily.

What you might struggle with is to do them all at the same time.

Particularly on a reserved seating plan.

In my last blog (you won’t believe what he did when he clicked here) I mentioned about getting feedback, having chats and then sharing what I was working on. I had chats, got feedback and now here’s the sharing.

There’s three things that it’s very important to know before you read this:

  1. The room I’m working in is exceptionally hot so if some of the ideas and writing seems to have been written by a man currently gently sauteeing in his own sweat then that’s the reason.
  2. It’s not finished – I need feedback, help, advice, informal chats, walks by the sea with Pierre quoting socially-spacing relevant lines of Shakespeare at me. If you read this, find it interesting and don’t comment, then, well, what kind of a person are you.
  3. It may seem futile, but actually I find myself learning by doing this – finding out more about systems, possibilities and ideas. I designed a theatre in traverse from scratch socially spaced – I realised that a simple 45 degree angle change can increase capacity by 8.5%. I’ve learnt lots by reading – tweets, some of the amazing resources by Baker Richards, TRG, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, Audience Finder. I daresay people may have learnt things from blogs (click here for my patented tips to get rich quickly scheme).

Finally, it’s all jpegs. Mostly because I’m tired (please don’t tell me Supercool!) and I’ve not the time to copy & paste and then reformat.

That’s it. Enjoy x


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