BWW Blog: Cheyenne Dalton - AU Singers or The Weekend Before Finals

So, around this time of year, AU Singers, Auburn University's Showchoir, is gearing up for performances. This December, their lineup included Believe from The Polar Express, The Christmas Can-Can, and Jailhouse Rock, among many other songs. People from all over the campus are involved in Singers - from music education, to theatre, to applied discrete mathematics, engineering, economics, and biomedical sciences. They all have very distinct personalities, and it's nice to seem them working together to get their show to be the best it can be. The common goal really brings them together in a way that they focus mostly on the group ensemble.

They hold three performances (and two dress rehearsals) in Auburn University's Telfair Peet Theatre, which is my affiliation with the group. For the past three years, I've run sound for these performers, and it's been great. It's stressful at times because we only get to tech for two short rehearsals, and people who's names I'm trying to learn are coming in and out with tracks on usb drives (and sometimes .... CD's....). We work on the fly a lot more than we do in the theatre, and I'm trying to keep up with twelve mics this show. We usually only have eight - so it's been interesting bringing in four lavs to add to the eight handhelds. We set up four monitors, two with one feed and two with another, for the singers and the band. I have a mic on the piano, but luckily the other instruments are loud enough that we don't have to mic them, too. Did I mention it's the weekend before finals, and Auburn doesn't give us any dark days to study?

So why do I keep coming back? These kids are some of the sweetest people I've worked for. I get "thank you"s and "please"s, "good job"s and "you're awesome"s until I get tired of smiling. I tape down cables and get thanked; I hand someone mic tape and get thanked; I return a usb drive and get thanked; I do my job and get thanked. Working for these people is rewarding not only because they're so thankful, but also because they're so fun. They all love what they do and I can tell - by how they treat each other and how they treat the tech staff. It's easy to see that they really do respect the work that I and the other technicians are doing for them - and we're happy to work when we get that respect. We loaded out yesterday, and I'm about to get in gear for The Nutcracker and finals week.

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