The Networked Professional

I have always thought of the word “Networking” as a business term used to excuse spending lots of money in a bar or restaurant entertaining people who might be able to throw you a bone at some point in your career. I also used to think of it as a practice that I wasn’t interested in and I didn’t really see how it could help me in my career, however during this course I have really opened my mind as to what networking actually is.

We all have networks, whether they are professional or private, and we use them every day without really considering what we are doing. Personally, I see my most valuable network as my professional network of Actors or dancers or singers that I have worked with in the past. Someone once told me that the hardest thing about getting into musical theatre is getting your foot in the door and once you are in, you’re more likely to work. I think there is a lot of truth in this to the extent that you work with people and they provide feedback to others about your skills and professionalism and in turn you build up a reputation that dictates how others look at you in auditions and castings and therefore determines whether or not you get the job. The more contacts you have in the industry, the more likely you are to have built up a reputation (be it a good or a bad one) and I think this is where networking comes into practice.

I think one of the biggest revolutions in Networking in recent years has been the development of social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, myspace etc. I also think that this is where most of my networking takes place, purely because it is an easy and non-intrusive way of contacting other professionals and it’s a great way to keep your ear to the ground and find out exactly what is going on in the industry. If, for example, I wanted some free tickets to a show for a colleague, I could simply find a friend that is in that show and send them a message on facebook with the mutual understanding that if they ever wanted free tickets for the show that I’m in, they are welcome to get in touch. This is where I found the article on “game theory” in the reader to ring true.

In Axelrod’s article he talks about Cooperation in a mathematical language that may not seem applicable in the musical theatre industry. Axelrod used a game called “the prisoner’s dilemma” to put to the test methods of cooperation where players were rewarded for cooperation but where one player could also take advantage of the other player for personal gain. To me the most interesting observation was that TIT for TAT is almost always mathematically the best strategy. TIT for TAT was the simplest strategy and it was the best, whatever the player does to you, you do back, meaning if they want to cooperate, you cooperate back, if they take advantage of you, you take advantage back.

To me this applies in the real world almost universally, I get free tickets for their show, they can have free tickets for mine; I submit their name for a job, they keep me in mind if anything comes up. I think it is also just good practice to treat others as you wish to be treated and hopefully, this will come back to you. All of this comes down to your reputation which as I said earlier, I believe to be just as important in the casting process as your talent, if people have heard that you are good to work with, they are far more likely to employ you than if your reputation is not a good one. I think the best way to keep a good reputation is to maintain your networks, and make sure that you help and work with the people who may one day be able to help you.

Inquiry

I have been thinking carefully about some lines of inquiry that I might pursue later in the programme and I keep coming back to the same interesting question.

What effect have T.V talent shows had on musical theatre? Is it a good thing for professionally trained performers?

I am currently in a musical that has recently turned to celebrity to sell tickets, as have many other musicals in the west end, and it has definitely had an effect on the ticket sales. We are now attracting a whole new audience to musical theatre that simply would never have considered coming to see theatre before and I think this is to do with crossing genres. Very cleverly, producers have bought into the popularity of reality television and are employing its “stars” as headline acts in musicals.

I think there are a lot of professionals that would argue that they have trained and worked hard for years to get the opportunities that reality television personalities get handed to them on a plate and that producers are sacrificing the quality and credibility of the show to sell more tickets.

Conversely, I think there are many very strong arguments in favour of this new business model. For every new flash in the pan celebrity in a musical there are hundreds of professionals in employment that perhaps would have been out of work. This doesn’t just stop at performers, there are now lighting crew, LX technicians, stage managers, front of house staff, marketing professionals and countless other departments vital to running a large scale musical, in gainful employment due to the demand for such celebrity.

I suppose it depends on how you look at musical theatre, do you look at it as purely a business or do you see it as a credible art form? As a business, the west end has bucked all trends in the current recession and continues to thrive financially when many other industries have suffered. But are we giving up too much to gain such wealth? Does the quality of the show suffer? In my own experience I have met many extremely talented performers who are perfectly able and competent to perform in leading roles and yet have lost out to less experienced and less talented individuals to ensure a good return on investment for the producers.

I think there are very strong arguments either way and it has certainly sparked a lot of debate in recent years among my colleagues and peers. I think the attractive prospect of this enquiry is that I am undecided as to where I stand on the matter and I think an un-biased opinion is definitely a useful thing when trying to step back from being a professional performer and look at the situation from a wider angle.

I also think that on further investigation it would be a very easy subject to research as there will be no end of resources online and in newspapers and magazine articles due to the fact that this is very current and still in the public’s interest. I also think it would be very interesting to have a look at the society of London theatre’s annual financial report and look at the hard figures behind the opinions.

Campus session 10/11/10

Unfortunately I couldn't make the professional networking campus session because i was rehearsing for a performance on BBC children in need next Friday, i hope it was useful and i look forward to reading all about it via the blogs!

Reflective journal

A few weeks ago I had a very interesting day at work and I thought it would be the perfect day to write about in my reflective journal. I must say that I was a little bit sceptical about how useful a private journal would be to me but after having put down my thoughts and feelings using the frameworks of Reid and Moon, I have actually learned some things about how I learn and the effectiveness of trying out new ways to learn.

Normally in my line of work I have the same day over and over again and it’s sometimes very difficult to see what you’re learning about your profession when on the surface, doing the same thing at the same time every day would seem like a futile learning experience. Now and again though, you face a problem or experience that you’ve never had to face before and it’s at these vital points in my career that I feel I have learned the most, and what happened a few weeks ago was one of these crucial learning experiences.

It was on a Saturday morning that I received a phone call from my dance captain explaining that we were very badly short of boys due to illness, injury and holiday. She went on to explain that as things stood, the opening number of the show, which normally would have 4 dance couples, would be down to only 1 couple! She continued to explain that it was only a 2-minute piece and wouldn’t take me very long to learn and could I come in half an hour early to learn the new choreography.

I have to be honest, at this point it felt like all of those classic anxiety dreams that performers have were coming true, I was about to be shoved on stage in front of a paying audience without having a clue what I was to do.

I should also explain that by nature I am an extremely cautious person, I wouldn’t normally even sing at a Karaoke without having fully researched possible song choices, being sure of their chorus and verse structure and having had a 2 hour singing lesson to perfect them! Of course this is an overstatement but never the less, I like to know EXACTLY what I’m doing before I do it.

So a few short hours later and I was on a West end stage, wearing a costume I’d never worn, dancing with a partner I’d never danced with, doing choreography I had learned in a caffeine fuelled haze of panic!

Luckily, every thing went well, but it was after this experience that I started to think about what I should learn from it. I think my professional experience came in very handy in this situation, I had been a swing before so I was used to learning a lot of information quickly and accurately and I think my performance experience helped me put my nerves to rest and just concentrate on not dropping my partner.

I then Looked at Kolb's learning cycle:

 

Normally, I would put myself firmly in the bracket of “Active experimentation”. This Is where I feel most comfortable entering the learning cycle, somewhere I can analyse and perfect what is going to happen so that when it happens I am ready for any eventuality. However, on this occasion, at such short notice I was forced to enter the learning cycle at the very top “Concrete experience”. I think the main thing I will take from this experience is the fact that in certain situations, where there is no time for planning, you just have no option but to grab the bull by the horns and go head first into the unknown. I think I have to learn to trust the experience and knowledge I have gained to take me through difficult situations without forgetting to learn from what has happened, this is perhaps the most valuable thing I have learned so far in doing this course and I’m glad I have the opportunity to put it into practice in real life experiences.

BAPP youtube video

I have finally uploaded my youtube video, it may not be fancy but i hope it ticks all the boxes, ENJOY!

Sandy's youtube video

Professional communications technologies and blurring the lines between colleague and friend.

Last week I was standing at the stage door of the theatre I work in, when an old friend of mine, not in the entertainment industry, happened to walk by. After exchanging the usual pleasantries I introduced him to a colleague of mine, but I didn’t use the word colleague, I said he was a friend who worked with me.

That started me thinking about the difference between friends and colleagues. Here are the dictionary definitions of both colleague and friend;

Colleague; a person with whom one works, especially in a profession or business

Friend; a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection

(Apple dictionary Version 2.1.2 (80.3) 2005-2009 Apple Inc.)

In the particular industry in which I work, Musical theatre, I discovered that these two normally separate relationships become intertwined and mixed up. This is largely due to a few different reasons;

• We are working with colleagues who share a passion, who are likeminded people and who have very similar experiences, surely all valid qualities found in friends?

• We work very unsociable hours and so our social behaviour normally takes place with each other instead of people who work a regular 9-5 job.

So what has all of this got to do with Professional communications technology?

I started thinking about my online persona or profile and how it reflects on me as a person and I realised that if I’m not at work with someone, and not socialising with them because they’re fast asleep by the time I finish work, then how do we define our friendships with the people we don’t work with? The answer is that my friends that don’t work 8 shows a week 5-11PM only really ever communicate with me using web based technology i.e. facebook, youtube etc. I can keep up to date with what’s happening in their lives via web 2.0 technologies. I discovered that even if I have not seen or spoken to them in years, I feel like I am still in touch with their everyday lives, I have watched their children grow, I have seen their holiday snaps, we’ve exchanged birthday messages and shared experiences and information.

The most interesting thing I realised though was that most of my interactions online are with my colleagues, and past colleagues. In Musical theatre there is typically a very high turnover of performers, meaning that I could be working with the same 30 people for 6 months and then all of a sudden be working with an entirely different set of performers and creatives for what could be weeks, months or years. The result of this huge migration in personnel is that we build up a huge network of other professionals without even realising it. These Colleagues quickly become friends and I then watch their children grow, look at their holiday snaps.

When I look at my facebook account for example, I would say that around 80% of my friends are people with whom I have worked or met through other professionals. This means that my social life is also my professional life and the two in fact go hand in hand. Web 2.0 technologies make it possible for me to keep in touch with these people and share information, ask advice, and gain other contacts.

10 years ago, this sort of professional communications would have been conducted in bars and restaurants, or in theatres and rehearsal spaces. Web 2.0 makes it possible for us to have these interactions constantly and, used properly, these web based technologies should help develop and grow our professional practices.

Flickr Photos!

Finally, after a few very busy weeks i've been able to sit down and tackle some of these tasks! First of all i uploaded some of my pictures to flickr, they'll never win a Pulitzer but i hope they give you an idea of my working life, Click on the hyperlink below and enjoy them!

Sandy's Flickr Photostream

Professional Profile

I have been working professionally in the musical theatre industry for 6 years. My credits include ensemble and understudy Billy/Stan/Jordan in Dirty Dancing, West end; Swing and assistant dance captain on We will rock you, West end; ensemble in Gaddafi with the English national opera, London Coliseum; and swing in the original German cast of We will rock you.

I trained at London Studio Centre where I gained my DipHe Theatre dance. During my professional training I developed skills in all areas of theatre and performance including stage fighting, singing, acting and all aspects of dance. Since leaving London Studio Centre I have been lucky enough to perform all over the world including television shows, stadium tours and corporate events. I also teach west end workshops for Pineapple performing arts and at many other theatre schools up and down the country.

As my career develops I hope to move onto performing more principal roles in musical theatre and then eventually moving behind the curtain, where I am interested in using the skills and knowledge I have gained as a performer, in the management and production side of the theatre industry.

Getting started and returning to higher education

Finally, after attending the induction day last Tuesday i have the time to sit down and start my blog. It was really great to be there last Tuesday and meet a few of the people who will be travelling with me on my journey through higher education, i'm really looking forward to being an active blogger and helping others (who i hope in return will help me) in the form of critical commentary and support.

I suppose one of the first things i'd like to blog about is how daunting it is returning to higher education after 6 years of working professionally in the musical theatre industry. I trained at London studio centre where my higher education was very practical, giving me the tools i needed to succeed in the theatre industry. As many of you who have trained in theatre will know it's a physically challenging time and i'm really looking forward to doing a degree that doesn't involve pulled hamstrings or bruised ribs!

I think that perhaps the most daunting thing for me is going to be changing my life slightly to accommodate the work that needs to be done. I'm very settled in a busy schedule and i suppose i'm worried about finding the time to give my degree the attention i feel it deserves. I think for me one of the little added learning experiences will be how to use my time more effectively.

In 2000 i started my first degree in Mechanical Engineering, that was before i decided to join the circus and be an actor. I stayed at Aberdeen university for 1 year and i was thinking back to my experiences the other day. 10 years ago, if you were writing a dissertation or notes from a lab session, it was all done by hand and then later typed up in a communal computer room. Even just 10 years ago, laptops were the size of a DVD player and cost far more than many students could afford. Now, 10 years on, i'm looking forward to a very different learning experience where i can take my work with me anywhere. I'm having images of sitting on a beach in Thailand whilst discussing the finer points of reflective writing! Using the web 2.0 technologies have so far been a pleasure and i really think it's the future of learning. It makes you think on your own, rather than being spoon-fed information and being asked for black and white answers. Learning is far more than that, I think learning is self discovery, and i'm looking forward to using the skills i develop over the next year and a half to make me a better professional and a more rounded prospect for future employers.