Okay… but the seats face the stage. So from an audience perspective, the Front of House is at the back of the house.
Although I suppose it's like Stage Right, these designations are made by people who spend most of their time in audience-free theaters (not empty because they're filled with the people who work there).
It's not so much about the audience perspective as it is the layout of the building. Just like backstage is the area behind the stage, other areas like behind the bar, or the storage areas, green rooms, offices, tech rooms, weird tunnels full of mysterious cables, etc are all collectively 'back of house'.
Like when you go to a big box store and they see if they've got something 'out the back', the back of house areas are those generally not seen by the public. The term front of house likely evolved as the opposite of this.
I'd say that's the difference between the house (the whole building) and the hall (dk if this is the corect term) inside of the building. In a usual theater/opera house you'd have the main entrance in the front (of the building), then the audience room, and the stage/backstage at the back of the building. So the audience is usually facing the back of the house.
Okay… but the seats face the stage. So from an audience perspective, the Front of House is at the back of the house.
Although I suppose it's like Stage Right, these designations are made by people who spend most of their time in audience-free theaters (not empty because they're filled with the people who work there).
It's not so much about the audience perspective as it is the layout of the building. Just like backstage is the area behind the stage, other areas like behind the bar, or the storage areas, green rooms, offices, tech rooms, weird tunnels full of mysterious cables, etc are all collectively 'back of house'.
Like when you go to a big box store and they see if they've got something 'out the back', the back of house areas are those generally not seen by the public. The term front of house likely evolved as the opposite of this.
I'd say that's the difference between the house (the whole building) and the hall (dk if this is the corect term) inside of the building. In a usual theater/opera house you'd have the main entrance in the front (of the building), then the audience room, and the stage/backstage at the back of the building. So the audience is usually facing the back of the house.