In this second networking session, I spoke with audience members in the post show and talkback sessions after the legally blonde performances. I didn’t speak with too many people, but there were one or two interesting conversations that came around.
One of the interesting conversations I had was with a theater student from FSCJ. I didn’t catch their name, but we spoke a bit after the second showing. The FSCJ students were here as part of a talk session with our cast. Students would be able to ask questions and talk about the both the actor’s and the technician’s experiences with the show.
This conversation was somewhat funny to me actually, because at the time I was still technically working, and they were the one to initiate the conversation. The show had just finished, I was cleaning up my station and starting to collect microphones from the actors, and I noticed a man probably around my age stand straight up, turn around, and look directly at me. He had a look of pure excitement on his face as he yelled at me from 3 rows away “Are you the sound guy? Wow! Hold on, can I see your board? I’m coming over!” Imagine my panic as I’m assuming some strange man is about to run up and try to come into my booth full of expensive sound equipment. He didn’t, much to my relief.
The man, thankfully, simply came up to the window and leaned inside to get a better look. We ended up talking about my board and how it was analog and not digital. We talked about my microphone setup, the work I did, how long I’ve been doing it, and what I did to prepare. We also talked about him and where he’s from, what he does, and his experience with theater sound. Overall, it was interesting. I won’t lie, it was also very awkward and uncomfortable, but his enthusiasm was charming and I was happy to talk with him.
I didn’t really prepare beforehand. This experience definitely caught me off-guard. In the future, any preparation at all would be an enormous help and improvement. I think, in retrospect, that wasn’t too different from how I would like to network for theater tech if I were going to. What better place to find someone in theater, than at one?
