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Temp theatre - decking as bench seating


TomHoward

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Evening all

 

We have a temporary theatre setup 'in the round' using decking we are planning - we have done it before a few years ago, as below:

 

266247_2118169882939_5345935_o.jpg

 

(Before anyone gets too excited, the rear row of chair were strapped into the deck, and side handrails added - this is during build)

 

However - we are thinking of using bench seating rather than chairs, firstly for the feel of the piece, and secondly there's a thought that we will get higher numbers in the same space than with seating.

We're imagining people will just sit on the front of the deck, although we might provide cushion / foam / etc along the front edge of each.

 

Couple of quick questions if anyone has any experience:-

 

Is there anything narrow/cheaper than decking to use for bench seating?

The rear row of decking seems unnecessarily deep just to provide a bench to sit on. We could of course use 8x2 decks all around the rear row but that might be hard to source.

 

Does bench seating actually get more punters in? Do they sit closer than in seats or this a bad idea from the outset?

 

What's about the right height and depth per row? For seating we use 12" rise and 3ft depth. I guess an 18" rake as 2ft seems a bit steep?

 

Many thanks in advance

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Some safety officers / officials have a hard time with bench seating - there's not actually any rules/regs against it but all the data & examples they will have access to will be for individual seats so they panic because they have nothing to gague your bench seating against & so get very defensive.

 

Unless your performance is less than 30min then you need benches with backs / back supports on, you also need the leg drop to be comparable to a normal chair (ie 14" minimum) otherwise it'll be very painful to sit on as you're having to use lots of muscle strength just to stay in place.

 

There are still some "in the round" grandstand systems out in hire stocks (disclosure, my parents own one of 'em) so you may well be able to rent something in as a turnkey service rather than having the hassle of trying to create your own system.

 

Can you fit more in, yes and no. To comply with the rules and regs you have to define the capacity of each bench and take reasonable steps to enforce it. The numbers you base these calculations on can be found in the Yellow book but ultimately (ie officially) the saving you actually make is from not having arm-rests between each seat - our bench calculations are based on a liner width of 47cm per person so that'll give you an indication of how many extra you can get in the space.

 

Ultimately the decision between Bench or Scoop seating is artistic and atmospheric - bench seating makes audiences get closer and more familiar with those around them and makes for a very different atmosphere to the audience you'd have sat in individual seats.

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Thanks Tom

 

Safety officers are not really a concern, we are a college and this is for a junior school production so we only have to deal with our internal H&S manager who we work well with.

 

The evening is a festival style drama production, with 5x 20-30minute plays. Not certain about how the intervals will work out yet. I'm imagining we would cushion/foam but I don't think backs are going to be viable - we have the chairs already (same as in picture) so we'd probably just use those if the workload became too much. I'm working on an 18" rise, with the cushioning I guess this could be up by another inch or two.

 

Please do message a details for your parents company as I would be happy to compare. We do have to hire the decking in so it's not no-cost to us.

 

It'll be ticketed and ushered so we can work out a maximum fairly easily and hopefully reasonably manage it.

The main advantage to us will not be the width needed but the depth of the back row - as we can use thinner decking for the top row as they will sit on the front lip of the deck.

 

The productions are all on the subject of war through time (cheerful), so the sparse and bench seating could work well, but I'm a little worried about comfort over that time without back rests. To be fair though our usual theatre chairs do give you a terribly numb arse after more than an hour anyway...

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All of our seating is bench seating, and contrary to what you might think it doesn't guarantee more seats available. My seating allocation is 190 on average, 230 if we are expecting a lot of kids, despite it being calculated at 210. People spread, and given the choice will not sit thigh to thigh with a stranger. A chair will force them to sit close, a bench allows them to leave 2-3 inch gap between them, which when you have 15 in a row turns into two feet wasted which is a whole seat. You can do it if you have good ushers basically.
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We used to custom build it out of Kwikform with carpeted risers and cushions but you will never squeeze more in than what you have already and that is less than the grandstanding that iTom mentions.

 

Give punters room to move and .... guess what? They do and like Parkinson's Law expand to take up the space allowed.

 

With your idea the back row would demand a backrest as well which is yet more "faffing."

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"Guide to Fire Precautions in Existing Places of Entertainment and Like Premises" is, of course, obsolete. However, it still provides some reasonable guidance. IIRC it states that you calculate occupancy for bench seating by dividing the length by 450mm.
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We have a drawing that we are now working on for this, but I have a further question..

 

http://I.minus.com/i78C9wyPcb5bH.jpg

 

It's decided that we ought to pad the seats somehow. I've allowed a 14 inch seat depth, and probably a 2inch foam thickness, so I'll need 14 inch x 2 inch x something in the region of 100m of foam.

Does anyone have any suggestions or recommended suppliers for that? So far it's our single biggest expense (much more than the steel deck hire)

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Just looking at the picture, which is only a sketch, I would say you need to have steps of some form in there as well, building regs says something about 15-20cm only, I am sure the yellow book is similar. I might be wrong though.
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Just out of interest, your photo makes it look like you are using each deck with all four legs the same height. Have you thought of overlapping your decks so that the front legs of the second row sit on the back of the front deck? Thus the front row has 4 x 18" legs, the second has 2 x 18" legs at the front and 2 x 3' legs at the rear, the third row has 2 x 18" legs at the front and 2 x 4'6" legs at the back and so on. You need to find a way of stopping the front legs falling backwards off the deck in front, but if you have kick boards then that's easily done. It means you can keep all the rows aligned together so it looks lovely and neat. Apologies if you're already doing this and the I'm reading the photo wrong!
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Yeah there are 9inch treads on the aisles and get-off treads (and a landing) on the back of the aisles as well, and handrails etc, but that's the sketch for the artistic types so has to be as simple as possible to illustrate.

 

The legs are only full length at the end decks, as they tier wider as they go back, at the outside edges they need to reach all the way to the floor.

 

It's clearer to see if I use our drawing rather than the arty version:

 

http://i7.minus.com/ilik3fFO4lKN4.jpg

 

It's more complex than that as well, as the rear decks are 2m Metrodeck rather than 8x4 Steeldeck as well, as those are the dimensions needed for the octagon to keep the row depths the same and keep the cut corner pieces as small as possible. Also we don't need the full 4' depth on the back row (they'll be ushered off walking on that, although there will be a rear handrail as well) and sourcing that many 8x2s was trickier than the metric deck.

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Note if using bench seating it is always good to mark out each "seat" with something (ribbon, tape or similar) as this guides the public about how much space they should take up, and allows FOH to check there are enough people in.

 

The Yellow Book does include some guidance for bench/deck seating I believe

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