Now I wasn’t involved directly in the events, but I’m angry enough to pit-by-proxy.
My sister assists a woman who is wheelchair-bound and legally blind. It’s likely the woman will be completely blind in the coming year or two. As such, she wants to travel and see the world, and she’s offered to pay expenses and a salary for my sister to go along with her; however, my sister isn’t yet ready to assist her so extensively so they decided to do a dry run by taking a weekend excursion up to Oregon to see a Shakespeare performance.
If I’ve got my facts right, this performance is rare and the tickets expensive. It’s something the woman would like to see before she goes 100% blind or is too poor in health to make the trip.
So they catch a flight up there, do a little sight-seeing, and get ready for the show. Then it gets like the scene out of Spiderman 2:
They are six minutes late. They are six minutes late and are not let in. At all.
Will they be causing a disturbance, walking around and trying to find their seat? Not likely; the wheelchair section is in a goddamn corner, both easy to find and fairly discreet.
Can they get in during the intermission? Nope.
Can they talk to the boss? Sure! And he says… nope.
Can they at least get a refund? Nope.
Now I agree that ticketholders shouldn’t disturb the performance. But who the hell keeps a wheelchair-bound, blind woman, who paid good money and flew in from another state - a woman that will possibly be blind or dead by their next performance - out of a theater?
The Handicapped person should have arrived on time, like everyone else.
I call her “the Handicapped person” as you think the fact she is in a wheelchair means they should make special allowances for her, so she shouldnt be treated like everyone else.
It’s hardly a special allowance to let someone in during an intermission - disabled or not.
I’m not angry that they weren’t let in late - they shouldn’t interrupt the performance - I’m angry that they weren’t let in at all and that nothing at all was done to help the situation.
The HP should have arrived on time like everyone else… but didn’t. If you’ve ever traveled with someone in a wheelchair you might have some understanding why folks who roll instead of walk tend to be late. She can’t move like everyone else, that’s why she’s in a wheelchair!
Yes, sometimes the fact someone is in a wheelchair means you should makes some allowances. At least let her in during intermission - not to do so is bullshit, petty, and ridiculous even for the able-bodied, much less for someone who is physically disabled and has mobility issues.
When my wife and I went to shows we generally arrived ridiculously early because we were taking public transport and never knew how much trouble we were going to have getting there, and didn’t want to take a chance on being late.
I do agree that I see no reason they couldn’t have been admitted during the intermission. Most theaters have a policy of not letting people in once the show has started but there is a degree of flexibility in this. You can almost always get in during the intermissions, sometimes you can be seating between scenes, and occasionally a theater will allow people to stand in the back of the theater until they can be seated without disturbing other audience members.
Next time that it’s for real, she might show up on time, but if I were the woman in the wheelchair, I’d be pretty concerned about your sister taking me around the world considering she couldn’t show up for a play in Oregon on time.
If it’s the theater I’m thinking of, “No Late Seating” is printed directly on the ticket. (And I believe, but could be mistaken, that that theater releases any unfilled seats - one of the reasons that there’s no seating at intermission is because the seat’s gone.) Yes, it sucks for your sister and the woman she assists, but it’s the standard policy for that theater and it applies to everyone.
As a side, I used to usher for (and still go to shows at) a theater that does let people in at certain points during the show, where there are “lulls,” and while it is less distracting than letting them in at any old time whatsoever, it’s still highly distracting - even if the newcomers are sitting off in the corner.
I design for two theatres in my area. One has ABSOLUTELY no late seating. If you are one minute late, you do not get in. Even if you are a critic. Everyone in the area has learned to deal with this. They get there early and showa ALWAYS start on time and people can plan their evenings. (Things like babysitters, work the next morning etc.) The other theatre will try to do anything for the ticketholders. If a group is running late, they will hold the performance. Audiences have gotten used to this and the starting time has become an average of twenty minutes late because of the perfromances being held for latecommers.
If you showed up 6 minutes after the show started and want to say you were 6 minutes late you are wrong.
With someone in a wheelchair you should have been there at least 30 minutes before showtime if not more.
So you should actually say that you were 36 minutes late for the show.
If it is the rule that they don’t let in late comers, then I don’t see how you can complain. However, I don’t see why they couldn’t let them in during the intermission.
Quite likely because they had already given the seat away. Quite often a popular show, with tickets as hard to get as this supposedly is, will take a list of names of people who arrive without tickets. At some point in time, after the time printed on the tickets, the theater will re-sell the tickets of anybody who hasn’t arrived on time to the people who showed up hours early on the chance that there would be a ticket for them.
Granted, they probably didn’t get a person in a wheelchair in the will-call line, but there’s no saying that the theater didn’t put a folding chair into the wheelchair area and sell the ticket to an able-bodied person.
If they resold the ticket then they should have given the latecomer a refund. If they didn’t then they should let them in during intermission. But to resell it AND not give a refund is to profit excessively through what amounts to theft. One OR the other is okay, but certainly not both.
