I woke up this morning and headed to work early to finish preparing for ASF's first techie summer day camp - "Behind the Curtain." We've done acting for various ages, stage combat, singing/dance camps for quite awhile, and this summer, the curriculum has been expanded to offering a camp catering to the kids interested in back stage. Our tech staff divided up the first day into chunks to introduce the kids to our various specialties, and met at the end of the day to touch base at where to go next based on the kids in the group.

For better or worse, I'd offered to introduce stage management as well as audio... and although I'm still pretty confident in my stage management abilities, sharing those skills with six 14 to 17 year-olds is another matter. So this morning, I was reviewing text books and prompt books, as well as what I could tell them about the space. I went over what I planned to show them and tell them in the realm of audio, and headed out to do audio and keyboard set-up for the "Broadway" acting/dancing/singing camp. Relatively reassured, I awaited my end of day presentation.

The first downer of the day, was that none of the kids in our group had any interest or experience in sound besides turning on an area mic. I knew that hoping for a sound kid was pretty far reaching, I could still hope.

The second downer, was finding out that my workshop and another event were scheduled for the same time in the theatre, which meant that I got booted... so instead of getting to make some noise for the kids (and show them how cool sound can be) I was reduced to a booth tour and talking at them about what I do.

The third downer, although they were all pretty nice about it, it was pretty clear that they could care less about what I was telling them. I'm not necessarily that intuitive about kids, but I sure can read "BORED." And I had clearly managed to bore all of them in 15 minutes or less. So I resorted to my stand-by... showing them sound toys, and then after our mini-tour, reverting to stories about shows gone wrong, sound effects I had to create, and the fail safe: embarrassing personal stories about things I've done wrong.

I concluded audio with a break, which was greeted with equal disinterest - unlike college kids - one or more of whom needs caffeine and one or two who needs a smoke - all 6 flopped on the green room sofas and waited for what was next for nearly 5 minutes before resorting to talking amongst themselves. I ended break early of all things, and began again. Once I switched to stage management, there was a little more interest, but still - coupled with being the last presenter of the day, there was still a large amount of eye glaze.

I was more than glad to spring them 15 minutes early. Although it wasn't a disaster, the hour and forty-five minutes I spent with them wasn't a rousing success, either. I realized somewhere along the road, that it had been a long time since I'd stood in front of high school kids. Not only was I out of practice, I was out of date. These kids were completely different than any of those I'd taught the last time I'd done a workshop. I don't know how to articulate the differences, but it boiled down to I was some "OLD" lady telling them about sound. So, at the end of the day, feeling like an old fart, I realized that my preparation and was for naught, but my paranoia, it seems wasn't. At our end of the day meeting, I told my fellow department heads that there would be no need for me to schedule any further time - unless they wanted to put the kids to sleep. Next summer, I'll just skip straight to the embarrassing stories.