Good evening, and welcome. May I see your ticket? Right this way.

I'm Frances. In the fall of 1979 I was a young widow with two small children, no money for theater tickets and a terrible need to get out of the house one night a week, and a friend told me that if I volunteered to usher at the Chestnut Street Playhouse I could see every show for free. I signed up for two performances a month. Twenty seasons later I'm still signed up for two performances a month, the children are grown and one of them ushers too, and I have seen, by my count, 412 performances of 173 productions from the back of Section B with a flashlight in my hand. This is my notebook. Some of it is useful. Some of it is just what I remember.

The Playhouse, for those who don't know it, is a 380-seat regional theater in a building that was a vaudeville house in the 1920s and a movie theater after that. It has red velvet seats, a balcony that creaks, a ghost (allegedly; more below), and a company of professional actors and a small staff who could not run the place without about ninety volunteers, of whom the ushers are the ones you see. Everything on this page is my own opinion and not the theater's, and I've left out names.

Every theater has its own, but they mostly come down to the same handful, and after twenty years I could recite ours in my sleep. I have, in fact, according to my daughter.

1. Be there an hour before curtain. White shirt or blouse, black skirt or trousers, comfortable black shoes (you're on your feet for three hours), the Playhouse name tag, and your flashlight with fresh batteries. Check your section: every seat down, nothing left from the matinee, programs stacked at the top of the aisle.
2. House opens thirty minutes before curtain. Take the ticket, read the row and seat (not the price; nobody wants to hear the price), walk them to the row, point to the seat, hand them a program, and smile. Do not touch anyone's elbow unless they ask for an arm. Many of our patrons are getting on in years, as am I, and a good many of them do ask.
3. No late seating during the overture or the first scene. This is the rule people argue with me about, and I've stopped arguing back. Once the lights go down, the doors close, and the latecomers wait in the lobby with me until the stage manager's signal comes through on the little light by the door, usually at the first scene change. Then we go in quietly, by flashlight, to the back rows, and they take their real seats at intermission. It's not to punish anyone. It's so that the 378 people who were on time don't have you crawling across their knees in the dark during the scene the actors have been rehearsing for five weeks.
4. The flashlight points at the floor. Never up, never at the stage, never at a face. You light the steps, you light the row number, you switch it off. A flashlight in the balcony during a blackout can be seen from every seat in the house, and the director will find out who did it.
5. No photographs, no recording, no food in the house. We say it kindly and we say it once and then we go get the house manager. The cough drops are unwrapped in the lobby, please, not in the third row during the quiet scene. Twenty years and I still can't get anyone to do that.
6. Count the house. After curtain, each usher counts the bodies in her section and reports it to the house manager, who reports it to the stage manager. We know exactly how many people are in the building at all times. If there's a fire, that's the number we're getting out.
7. Intermission is fifteen minutes and you're working the whole time. Ladies' room line, lost tickets, seat disputes, the man who wants to know if the play is "almost over." (It's intermission, sir.)
8. Lost and found goes in the box in the house manager's office, labeled with the date, section and row. In twenty years the collection has included, in roughly descending order of frequency: eyeglasses, umbrellas, gloves (always one), programs with phone numbers written in them, hearing aids (six), a wig, a birdcage (empty), and one set of upper dentures in a napkin, which were claimed the next morning by a very embarrassed gentleman who had taken them out to eat a caramel. You see why we don't allow food.
9. You stay until the house is empty and the seats are checked. Then you may go home. Then you may tell everyone what you thought of the show. Not before, and never in the lobby where the actors' mothers can hear you.
10. You never, ever say anything about a performance to a patron beyond "I hope you enjoy it." They came to make up their own minds.

The night the power went out (February 1987). Ice storm. Middle of the second act of a very serious play. The lights went, the emergency lights came on, and the stage manager came out and asked everyone to please stay in their seats. And then, without anybody deciding it, the two actors on stage simply kept going, by the light of the exit signs and, when we ushers had the sense to help, by fourteen flashlights held very steady from the aisles. They finished the act. The audience did not breathe. When the lights came back on twenty minutes later the applause went on so long the actors had to come back out twice. I have never seen anything better in a theater, and I never expect to.

The proposal (October 1994). A young man arranged with the house manager to propose to his girl at intermission from the stage, which we don't normally allow, but he'd been persistent and polite for a month. Lights came up, he walked down the aisle, climbed the steps, turned around, and could not get a word out. Not one. Stood there for what felt like a minute. Finally the girl said, from Row F, loud enough for the whole house, "Yes, Danny, get down from there," and 380 people cheered. They were married the next spring and they still come to every opening night. I seat them in Row F.

The bat (summer, several years running). Old building. Every August there is a bat. The bat likes the balcony. The bat does not like the second act of musicals. There's a net on a pole in the janitor's closet and the tallest usher on duty is the designated bat usher. I have been the designated bat usher exactly once, in 1991, and I would like it noted that I got him on the first try.

The night the leading lady's mother sat in my section (1983). She cried through the whole thing, told everyone around her who she was, and applauded every entrance. Nobody minded. I gave her three programs.

The fainting (a heat wave, July 1995). Air conditioning gave out at the top of the second act and an elderly gentleman in Row M went over sideways. Our ushers are trained in first aid, and it turned out two doctors and a nurse were in the house, as there always seem to be. He was fine. He came back the next week to see the end of the play, and he told me it was worth the wait.

The ghost. Every old theater has one, and ours is said to be a stagehand from the vaudeville days who is heard walking the balcony when the house is empty. I have been alone in that balcony after closing more times than anyone on the current staff, and I have heard footsteps exactly twice, and both times it was the building settling in the cold. I think. I say good night to him anyway, just in case. It costs nothing.

The season was announced in the spring and the usher sign-up sheet went up Labor Day. I've already got my dates. Here is what's coming, with my own notes; for tickets and times you'll have to call the box office, because I'm the usher, not the box office, and they've asked me to stop trying to be.

Ushers may see any show on any night they're working, from the back of their section, standing. In twenty years I have seen every play the Playhouse has done, some of them eight times, standing up. You'd be surprised how well you get to know a play from the back of the house. You'd be surprised what you notice on the eighth night that you missed on the first.

• We can hear you. The house is built to carry sound from the stage out; it carries sound from the seats back nearly as well. The actors hear the candy wrapper. They hear the whisper. They especially hear the whisper that says "I think he's going to die at the end."
• We know which seats squeak (B-14, the whole of Row J in the balcony) and we're sorry, and there isn't money to fix them this year either.
• The best seats in the house are not the most expensive ones. They're Row K, center, about two-thirds back on the main floor, where the sound comes together and you can see the whole stage without turning your head. The front row is for people who want to see the actors' shoes.
• The "five minutes to curtain" chime means five minutes. The "places" call backstage comes at the same moment. The play starts when the stage manager says so, not when the last person sits down.
• The ushers have seen the play. We know the loud bang is coming in Act Two. We know the actress who looks like she's about to faint is supposed to look that way. We are watching you for the real emergencies, and we can tell the difference.
• Nobody on the staff or in the cast is paid what they're worth, and the volunteers aren't paid at all, and the building needs a new roof. The reason your ticket costs what it costs is that it costs twice that to put you in the seat. Buy the season subscription. Put a dollar in the lobby jar. Tell your neighbors.
• Curtain calls are for the actors, not for you to get to the parking lot first. You can wait ninety seconds. They waited all night for you.
• We remember you. The couple in Row F. The gentleman who fainted. The lady who's been in seat D-7 for every opening night since before I started. The boy who saw A Christmas Carol at five and screamed at Marley and came back last year at nineteen with a girl on his arm and screamed again, on purpose, to make her laugh. That's the job. That's why I've stayed twenty years.

The Playhouse needs about ninety volunteers a season and always needs more. Ushers commit to two performances a month during the season (October through early July), attend a two-hour training in September (I teach it now, heaven help them), and get to see every show free from the back of their section. You'll need the white top and black bottom, the black shoes, and your own flashlight. The Playhouse provides the name tag, the training, the coffee, and the company of some of the nicest people in this town, many of whom have been doing it as long as I have.

Ask at the box office for the volunteer coordinator, or e-mail me and I'll pass your name along. Tell them Frances in Section B sent you. And come early. An hour before curtain. I'll be the one checking that the seats are down.

Good night. Mind the step.