Curtain

The complete premises-licence and performance-returns file of a licensing authority's theatre and entertainment licensing team — the municipal office that licenses a playhouse to open its doors, writes the conditions it must obey, counts the people it may admit, tests the safety curtain, inspects the building before the house opens, receives the return after every performance, and reviews or revokes the licence when it is breached.

Curtain holds every licensed premises as a register row: licence number, the building and its address, premises type, year built and listed status, the licensable activities permitted and the hours permitted for each by day of the week, the designated premises supervisor, and hard flags for LICENCE SUSPENDED, UNDER REVIEW, CONDITIONS BREACHED and ANNUAL FEE UNPAID. Each licence carries its conditions numbered as they are in the instrument itself — the mandatory conditions, those offered in the operating schedule, and those imposed by the sub-committee on determination — each tied to the licensing objective it serves and to the evidence that it is currently met.

The capacity is not asserted, it is derived: seated capacity by level, gangway and seatway widths measured, the number and width of exits from each level, exit capacity computed in persons per unit width, discharge time against the permitted evacuation time, standing-to-seated conversion where permitted, and flags for CAPACITY EXCEEDED ON RETURN and EXIT WIDTH DEFICIENT.

The iron and everything tested with it: the safety curtain's installation date and type, the required descent time against the measured time, the lowering in view of the audience where that is a condition, the proscenium wall, the drencher system, the smoke vents over the stage and their release test, emergency lighting duration, weekly alarm tests, rigging inspections with load certificates, and flags for TEST OVERDUE and TEST FAILED.

After every performance the licensee must return: the date, the production and its nature, curtain-up and curtain-down, the attendance admitted against the determined capacity with the margin shown, whether standing was sold, the duty manager and the fire officer on duty, special effects used with their notification reference, children in the cast with their licence numbers and the chaperone present, incidents in the house, and flags for RETURN LATE, RETURN NOT SUBMITTED and ATTENDANCE OVER CAPACITY.

Also included: applications, variations and transfers with their advertisement and consultation periods; representations, review hearings and appeals to the magistrates' court with the written reasons; child performance licences with hours by age band and chaperone ratios; temporary event notices against their statutory ceilings; fees computed from rateable value with the suspension that follows non-payment; a licensee portal; and the team's own dashboard.

Set in the idiom of a Victorian letterpress theatre playbill crossed with a municipal licensing stamp and ledger: a deep oxblood-black ground like an unlit auditorium, aged brass-cream ink, an oversized stacked wood-type masthead with printed rules of varying weight between the lines, a drawn auditorium section bled behind the fold showing the stalls, circles, proscenium and the safety curtain in its descended position with exit widths annotated, an impressed municipal rubber stamp, gaslight amber for granted determinations and stamp-violet reserved for suspension, breach, over-capacity and failed tests. No stock photography anywhere — every figure is hand-drawn inline SVG.