Emily Malen Interview: What is Front of House?
Title
Emily Malen Interview: What is Front of House?
Date
17 January 2019
Description
Oral history interview with Emily Malen, Front of House Manager and Access Development for the Theatre Royal since 2005.
What's the story?
Born in Leicester in 1982, Emily Malen came to the Theatre Royal in 2005 through Loughborough University’s Graduate Gateway Scheme.
She was originally placed within the education team, but gradually worked her way up the organisation to become Front of House Manager.
Of her many achievements Emily has also significantly developed the access work at the venue, ensuring the Theatre Royal is genuinely open to everyone.
In this interview, Emily simply and clearly describes what Front of House actually means, which basically encompasses the whole customer experience:
So Front of House: that is basically, just if you were coming to the venue, Front of House is everything that happens on the front of the stage in terms of the stage edge to where you sit in the auditorium, to the foyer areas, to the toilets. It’s that experience of the customers, whereas other areas is, if you thought Back of House, that’s all the backstage and the technical. So we at Front of House, we talk to people, obviously from the backstage, but our responsibility is people enjoying the shows, ensuring their safety, ensuring that the toilets are clean, ensuring that they can get an ice cream if they want one. All that thing about customer enjoyment, so Front of House, it’s quite interesting because in a Front of House role you’ll be thinking about, obviously it’s 2019 now, we’re thinking about shows in say, 2020, 2021. That’s part of what I’ve been looking at today. Another responsibility would be the matinee of Swan Lake that’s being performed right now. That’s obviously your present and then in the past you may have some customers that have fed back some correspondence about their visit and that’s something you’re also dealing with, so it’s very much in the past, present and future, in a Front of House role, but it’s all to do with customer enjoyment and they’re really our “bread and butter”. If they’re not happy, or they’re not wanting to come, we wouldn’t really exist and I think probably what I like in terms of the Front of House element is when a customer has fed back something and you made that change, it’s lovely that actually lots of changes here, especially in the Access front, they come from customers and it’s lovely to see that you can implement those changes to be a new way of the business running, if that makes sense.
She was originally placed within the education team, but gradually worked her way up the organisation to become Front of House Manager.
Of her many achievements Emily has also significantly developed the access work at the venue, ensuring the Theatre Royal is genuinely open to everyone.
In this interview, Emily simply and clearly describes what Front of House actually means, which basically encompasses the whole customer experience:
So Front of House: that is basically, just if you were coming to the venue, Front of House is everything that happens on the front of the stage in terms of the stage edge to where you sit in the auditorium, to the foyer areas, to the toilets. It’s that experience of the customers, whereas other areas is, if you thought Back of House, that’s all the backstage and the technical. So we at Front of House, we talk to people, obviously from the backstage, but our responsibility is people enjoying the shows, ensuring their safety, ensuring that the toilets are clean, ensuring that they can get an ice cream if they want one. All that thing about customer enjoyment, so Front of House, it’s quite interesting because in a Front of House role you’ll be thinking about, obviously it’s 2019 now, we’re thinking about shows in say, 2020, 2021. That’s part of what I’ve been looking at today. Another responsibility would be the matinee of Swan Lake that’s being performed right now. That’s obviously your present and then in the past you may have some customers that have fed back some correspondence about their visit and that’s something you’re also dealing with, so it’s very much in the past, present and future, in a Front of House role, but it’s all to do with customer enjoyment and they’re really our “bread and butter”. If they’re not happy, or they’re not wanting to come, we wouldn’t really exist and I think probably what I like in terms of the Front of House element is when a customer has fed back something and you made that change, it’s lovely that actually lots of changes here, especially in the Access front, they come from customers and it’s lovely to see that you can implement those changes to be a new way of the business running, if that makes sense.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Liz MacKenzie & Julia Holmes
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
