The figure on the bench
*I meant bleachers
The passage:
“The snowfall was intense and looked silky. The East Courts' pavilion's green canvas roof bowed ominously down, its white GATORADE logo obscured. A figure was out there, not under the shelter of the pavilion but sitting in the bleachers behind the east Show Courts, leaning back with his elbows on one level and bottom on the next and feet stretched out below, not moving, wearing what seemed to be puffy and bright enough to be a coat, but getting buried by snow, just sitting there. It was impossible to tell the person's age or sex.”
My analysis, from a little while ago:
The performers (tennis players) sit in the pavilion, and the audience sits on the bleachers, observing the performance from the outside.
I believe the figure may be Pemulis, who was recently kicked out of ETA, changing from a player within the academy to an outsider—a spectator.
The figure has ceased to perceive the performance from a viewpoint within the performance. He (?) now understands that the performance isn’t all there is, the performance exists as a limitation, a cage that keeps the real world locked out (another example of true individual freedom vs institutional control). His exclusion allows him to understand the existence of the illusion he once perceived as reality. Instead of being locked within the cage and seeing everything from its lens, he sees the cage for what it is, and he sees everything that exists beyond it. Most importantly, he is able to perceive his own performance from a new perspective; he no longer understands himself as the character he played, he realizes that he was always the actor behind the performance.
Not long after, Hal looks at his reflection in the window, but the image is beginning to morph with the snow behind the glass; in the Eschaton scene, snow represented the reality that had imposed itself on the illusion; “real world snow” falls upon the “nuclear theatre,” and Pemulis didn’t believe it because he was still confined to the “nuclear theatre,” but now it could be that the snow (the real, non-ETA world) envelops him like it enveloped the Eschaton court.