Martyn's Law for small theatres and cinemas
Theatres and cinemas have the easiest Martyn's Law count in the sector: your seats, plus everyone working the show — cast, crew, front of house, bar. At 200+ across the premises at the same time you're likely standard tier from Spring 2027. The encouraging part: licensed venues already run most of the required thinking; invacuation and lockdown are the genuinely new questions.
Most venue types have to puzzle over the 200-person threshold. You mostly have to read your own seating plan.
The count: seats, then everyone behind and in front of the curtain
The test is whether 200 or more people may reasonably be expected to be present at the same time — across the whole premises. For a single-auditorium theatre that's: the house at realistic capacity, plus cast and musicians, crew and techs, front of house, box office and bar. A 170-seat theatre with an am-dram cast of twenty, six crew and ten volunteers front of house is a 200-person building on a sold-out night — the seat count alone would have told you the wrong answer.
For multi-space venues — a two-screen cinema, a theatre with a studio space — the count is across the premises at the same time: two 120-seat screens with staggered start times can comfortably exceed 200 people in the building at once. Count the building, not the room. Three minutes in our scope checker settles it.
If your honest sold-out-plus-everyone number stays under 200, you're likely out of scope — record the reasoning (capacity, typical company size, the date you considered it) and review it annually or when anything changes.
Why you start 80% prepared
In scope means standard tier (the enhanced tier starts at 800+), and standard tier asks three things: notify the SIA when its system opens, have four workable procedures, and make sure your people know them. Here's the encouraging part — as a licensed venue you already live most of this:
- Evacuation is your existing fire drill with one new question asked of it: what if the danger were at one of the exits? Knowing your alternative routes and who directs the house is the addition, not the discipline.
- Communication is half-solved by the fact that you own a PA, a tannoy, and a workforce used to making announcements to a seated audience. Decide who says what, and who calls 999.
- Your front-of-house team already brief per-show. Adding the four procedures to the pre-show huddle and the volunteer induction is an evening's work, not a project — and a briefing record is what turns "we told everyone" into something you can show.
The genuinely new thinking: invacuation and lockdown
Two procedures won't map onto anything in your fire folder, and they're worth the real thought:
- Invacuation — danger outside the building: bringing the foyer queue in, holding the house seated rather than spilling the interval crowd onto the street, knowing which internal spaces are your safer areas.
- Lockdown — securing the building: which doors lock from inside and how fast, the stage door, moving people away from glazed foyers. In a building you know intimately, this is an hour's walk-through with the duty manager and a notepad — and then a written procedure your casual staff can follow.
Visiting companies and hirers slot into the same picture the way they already do for fire: a paragraph in the hire agreement and a copy of your procedures in the get-in pack covers the coordination expected of you.
Common questions
Our theatre has 190 seats — are we under the Martyn's Law threshold?
Maybe not. The count is everyone reasonably expected on the premises at the same time — audience plus cast, crew, front of house and bar. A 190-seat house routinely becomes a 220-person building on a sold-out night. Count the building, not the auditorium.
How does the threshold work for a multi-screen cinema?
Across the premises at the same time. Two or three modest screens with overlapping showings, plus foyer and staff, can total 200+ in the building at once even though no single screen comes close. Stagger times don't reset the count — simultaneity does.
We're volunteer-run amateur theatre — do the same rules apply?
Yes — the law looks at the premises and the numbers, not at whether anyone's paid. The duties are deliberately proportionate, and volunteer-run venues' habit of briefing front of house per show is most of the compliance already; the addition is covering the four procedures and keeping a record of who's been briefed.
Three minutes, no sign-up: are you in scope?
Our free scope checker walks you through the 200 test properly. And if you'd like one plain-English email a month between now and commencement, join the countdown list.