Confessions of a Box Office Manager: Killing time in a dark theatre

Our show closed last weekend and we have a whole month until the next one starts previews. Despite our theatre manager's cheery exhortation that "you can all take as much unpaid holiday as you like!" none of the team have elected to do so, Box Office salaries falling some way short of those of merchant bankers. As it's later in the year, none of us have any chunks of paid holiday to take, so here we all are… thrilled at having a nine to five, Monday to Friday week for once in our working lives, but also desperately looking for activities to fill the time.

We are especially mindful to ensure that we are looking busy whenever the theatre manager unexpectedly appears (which is often, and usually silently, giving rise to the speculation that he doesn't walk like normal people… he floats, or is on casters.) Either way, between the four of us we have devised a cannily choreographed routine whereby we can all be standing around discussing last night's TV soap developments one second, and furiously engaged in work-related activities the next: from studiously inspecting the inside of a filing cabinet, through double-checking the alphabetisation of the COBO box to, er, scrubbing the inside of the bin.

As manager, I get to pull rank and sit at the computer, trying to give the impression that I have literally just been selling tickets for the next production to a recently-departed customer. The manager approaches, stares beadily and unblinkingly through the window at the hive of activity within, and then moves soundlessly away. It puts me in mind of that bit towards the end of The Sound Of Music where the Von Trapps are hidden behind gravestones and the German officers shine the torch around the churchyard looking for them, except we have more paperclips, no nuns to protect us, and (arguably) less Nazism.

The marketing company for the next show haven't done any advertising yet, so customers are few and far between. The only signage we have are a couple of hastily crafted laminated A3 sheets baldly stating dates, prices and times for the new production (like a person with nothing better to do, I agonised for literally MINUTES over which was the most appropriate font to use… is Helvetica too aggressive? Would Lucida Console look too mechanical? Is Times New Roman funky enough? Who really gives a sh…) and we don't even have any leaflets to give away at this stage.

The former production's marketing team still haven't removed the posters from outside however, so the majority of recent visitors stride in expecting to be able to buy tickets for that. Upon being told that the show is no more, their reactions range from shoulder shrugging resignation to finding it hysterically funny. One gentleman took it personally however and got rather aggressive. I managed to stop myself from bellowing back at him "well, where the hell were YOU for the last four months of the run when we were almost reduced to clubbing passers-by over the head and dragging them in off the street?!"

The phone rings. It is the chief carpenter asking if we have a spare pair of hands to help paint dressing rooms backstage. I can hardly refuse, and throw the offer open to the team, hoping somebody will volunteer. They all go back to bin-scrubbing and cupboard-clearing with renewed vigour. As a believer in leading by example, I head into the backstage gloom myself, muttering darkly that somebody will pay for this, and hoping they've got a boilersuit that I can actually fit into. What the rest of the team don't know is that there will be sundry other maintenance jobs coming up while we are "dark", and I can now say with a clear conscience that I've done my bit!

I dare say the novelty of not having an evening show to prepare for will wear off, and the constant pressure to "look busy" certainly will. The next show, when the marketing kicks in, could potentially be a very big hit so we may look back on this time of indolence with affection. To the immense amusement of my colleagues, I have to travel home this evening with a stripe of magnolia in my hair (I ended up painting the dressing room ceiling). They won't be laughing when they hear what other maintenance-based "treats" the management have got in store for us over the coming weeks. But hey, nobody died.