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in the dark, like roaches. Some standing room patrons will plunk themselves into empty seats as soon as the curtain goes up. In other cases, people attempt to move up before the show starts.
    When I saw this, I really had no choice but to go after the patrons and send them back to their original seats. I often took a lot of verbal abuse in the process or had to listen to long debates.
    I know, I know. It’s hard to see an empty seat, especially in an enticing area, and hear an usher tell you that it’s unavailable. Whenever I’m at a show I surely appreciate the opportunity to spread out a little. I can especially understand this if you have a standing room ticket and you’re facing the prospect of spending close to three hours on your feet. It’s easy to think of an usher who is blocking you from moving up as a little person on a power trip; numerous patrons who were angry that I wouldn’t let them relocate certainly told me as much.
    However, the ushers aren’t denying you the chance to move because they’re horrible trolls. Really. They are just trying to keep the show from being disrupted as much as possible. In other words, they’re trying to ensure that everyone, including you, has a great experience at the performance.
    See, there’s a high probability that someone has already purchased the seats you want. Said patrons are most likely going to come in late. If the seats are empty, the usher can quickly throw the latecomers in. It’s a disruption, but a minor one. If people have moved into those seats, however, it’s a problem. The usher then has to shine her flashlight down the row, check everyone’s tickets, kick out the people who don’t belong there, and finally seat the latecomers…who, by the way, have been standing in the aisle, blocking others’ view of the show, during this entire exchange. After that the usher has to reseat the errant party who moved up. This assumes everything goes smoothly and the “relocated guests” cooperate and don’t try something cute, such as pretending they can’t hear the usher when she asks for their tickets. Just so you know, that never works; it just earns you a nice conversation with security.
    At the end of the day it’s a horrendous mess, it disturbs everyone, and it can be avoided if you simply keep your butts in the seats to which you’re assigned. Or, at the very least, use your brains and think critically about it. Common sense says not to plunk yourselves down into those two empty seats that are dead center in an otherwise totally occupied row. Really, guys, do you think those are going to remain empty?
    This even holds true if there’s a huge gaping section of empty seats. Especially then. I always cringed when I saw those sections, because it often meant that a huge group was running late. I worked at some performances where several hundred people came in halfway through Act I. Let me tell you, friends, those situations were horrible for everyone.
    It would be great if everyone arrived on time, but one has to be realistic: it’s New York. Things happen. Buses get caught in traffic, they get lost, they discover that they can’t park in front of the theater and they have trouble finding places to discharge their passengers. Subways stop in the tunnels or don’t come at all. Tourists can’t figure out the lay of the land. There are a thousand plausible reasons why a patron who means well and ostensibly leaves enough travel time might not make it to the theater by curtain. I was late to a show once when I was in London because I walked the wrong way from the Tube station and got hopelessly lost. I didn’t make it to the theater until well after curtain time.
    Given all of the above, I tried to be sympathetic toward latecomers. The only time they became annoying was when they took out their frustrations on me. Hey, I understood that they were upset at missing part of the show. I comprehended that whatever held them up had probably been stressful,