Room 05 · The scene
The scene: the small-room circuit, documented
How a small circuit holds a season, who actually books a listening room, and the arithmetic of an audience in a city of 139,804 people.
A circuit of small rooms is a system with a size. In a capital of a hundred and forty thousand people it is a different system from the one in a city of two million, and the difference is not taste: it is how often the same forty people can be asked to come out, and how many rooms that supports.
These two notes are the arithmetic and the practice. The first works out what a season looks like when the audience pool is finite and shows the sum. The second answers the question every travelling performer asks first, and gets wrong most often: who is actually holding the diary of the room, and what that person is optimising for.
No venue is named
The review documents how a circuit works, not which rooms are in it. The arrangements described here are the ordinary ones found anywhere, told in the general form, so that they stay true next season and do not put words in the mouth of any real house.
Room 05
In this room
The notes of this room, most recent first.
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· The scene
Who books a listening room in a town of 140,000
Who holds the diary of a small room, what each of the four optimises, and what a city's hundred-night pool means for the act asking for a date. The message that gets answered, in its five parts.
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· The scene
How the small room circuit holds a season
How many quiet nights can one city hold? The desk works the answer from one counted figure, four assumptions you can replace, and a share nobody knows until it is counted.
Two neighbouring rooms carry the same question further: The set and The writing. How the desk works is written in the editorial policy.