When I tell people in the software industry that I majored in theatre, I usually get some odd looks. Then they back away slowly, expecting me to spontaneously break into a mime-walking-against-the-wind routine. This, of course, is a completely ridiculous notion — I prefer the mime-trapped-in-a-box routine. I’m even working on a novel adaptation of it, which I tentatively call Honey, I’m Trapped In A Box. I really enjoy writing the character dialog.
Anyway, I avoid mentioning my theatre background whenever possible, with the exception of occasions when I need to clear a room of programmers. In a geek environment, theatrical behaviour is both strange and frightening to some, and is sometimes greeted with mistrust.
In the face of this, I maintain that theatre can teach a lot about how to run a software project, how to manage a team, how to hit deadlines, and how to distract people with something entertaining when you really screw up. That last one is particularly important.
From my very first show, I began earning skills that I could apply to life in the real world. My first role was a dancing waiter in an amateur production of Cabaret at the Richmond Gateway Theatre. The dance number was simple — the choreographer worked with what he was given and dumbed down his elaborate steps for a line of eight rhythmically-challenged waiters and no less than sixteen left feet.
And so, to strains of Willkommen, the line of waiters stumbled our way through endless weeks of rehearsals, flipping our trays over, under, and occasionally underfoot. One of the waiters, Randy, discovered the secret to flipping the tray under your arm without dropping it: hours of practice and a roll of double-sided sticky-tape.
That, I felt, was cheating. I’d practiced the tray-flip for hours at a time without dropping it more than every third attempt. As a budding stage professional, I didn’t need to resort to trickery. I continued to practice without taping my tray to my fingers.
Finally, we tripped our way into opening night, and the cramped backstage area was full of scantily-clad cabaret girls and white-shirted waiters practicing their steps, tray-flips, and ma-may-me-mo-moos. In the corner, I sweated quietly until little rivers of pancake makeup rolled off my temple and onto my shirt.
What if I dropped the tray? As I considered this possibility and watched the other waiters religiously taping their trays to their fingers, my confidence dissolved into a puddle of jelly that landed next to the growing pool of sweat-and-makeup at my feet. I grabbed a roll and, just for safety’s sake, I put a metre or two of it around my fingers and on the bottom of the tray.
The curtain went up, the band played, and into the stage lights we pranced, carrying our trays. It all went swimmingly until the tray flip. Halfway through the number, everything switched to slow-mo: the tray moved under, around, and exactly at the outside of it’s arcing path, I felt the tape go “pop”. I had time to think, oh… fuck, before I watched it depart from my fingertips.
It slipped from my fingers and tumbled up over my head, flashing in the stage lights before eventually returning to earth in a noisy metal crash. Then it rolled for a bit between the left feet of the first waiter and back around mine before coming to a full stop a metre or two downstage. I think I had stopped moving for a several seconds before the waiter next to me gave me a shove towards the exit.
On my way offstage I grabbed the tray and escaped to the wings. That would have been the end of it, had I not completely forgotten to go back on stage for the next number.
The lesson, of course, is do the show as you rehearsed it — don’t make changes on opening night. I trusted the sticky-tape too much, my weeks of practice went out the window, and my first moments acting on a stage became a minor disaster.
And that’s a valuable lesson for software projects too. Don’t change your plans right before the product release date. Don’t, for example, decide at the last moment to hire a different and untried translator for your user manual. Your English chapter about cross-tabulating data may turn into a Spanish chapter about making tables out of crosses. For example.
On an occasion such as that, however, I can easily distract people from my mistake with a quick mime-trapped-in-a-box routine. Works every time.