Theatre Safety

Episode 142: Theatre Safety

How safe is your theatre? How safety conscious are you? Do you know how to properly use the power tools in your shop? Do you know how to properly secure flats? The theatre can be a world of the imagination with a bare stage, actors and words. But if you want to add lighting, sets, or any special effects, you’re going to have to start thinking about safety. Kristi Ross-Clausen is constantly thinking about your safety and in this podcast she’s going to give you the tips and tools you need.

Show Notes

• Sapsis Rigging

• Entertainment Technician Certificate Program

• Example of Arbor Counterweight Systems

• Rosco Flamex paint additive

• Saw stop

• Example of a steel toe slip on

• Theatrefolk Blog

Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere.

I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk.

Hello! I hope you’re well. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Episode 142!

You can find any links for this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode142 and, let me warn you, there will be links! Oh, yes, there will be links, and I’m not going to tell you the movie that just flashed through my head because it’s completely inappropriate but let’s move on. Okay! (Okay, There Will Be Blood. I didn’t want to leave you hanging. Anyway.)

So, today, we’re talking, actually, it’s almost appropriate because we’re talking theatre safety today and that’s the one thing we do not want. We have a safe theatre; we want no blood, right? That’s right. We want none of that.

So, it leads to the question: “How safe is your theatre? How safety conscious are you? Do you know how to properly use those power tools in your shop? Do you know how to properly secure flats?”

The theatre can be a world of imagination with just a bare stage, actors, and words. That’s my go-to when I think about what theatre should be. However, if you want to add so many theatrical elements – I mean, if you want to add lighting and sets or special effects, these are all parts of building a theatrical world – you’re going to have to start thinking about safety and our guest today, Kristi Ross-Clausen, is constantly thinking about your safety. She’s got tips and tools that you need to make sure no one loses a limb – which no one’s going to do, right? Or even think about doing because we are all very, very safe, right? Right; no limbs going awry, no blood, and let’s not listen to what I have to say on this matter because, apparently, I don’t know anything which is why I have a guest. I have a guest so let’s get to it.

LINDSAY: All right! I am here with Kristi Ross-Clausen. Hello, Kristi!

KRISTI: Hello, Lindsay!

LINDSAY: So, tell everybody where in the world you are.

KRISTI: Well, right now, I am in my home in Appleton, Wisconsin, and I’ve travelled all over the place as a theatrical stage hand so, if you are anywhere in North America, I can probably empathize with what you’re dealing with.

LINDSAY: I love that! I also love the backstage shout-out because that’s something we are going to get into eventually. We are very excited to be able to talk about a backstage element to theatre and education because we know and I know a lot of you listening will have a lot of experience on the stage. You’re actors or you have directing backgrounds, but a lot of you don’t have offstage experience and, Kristi, I’m sure you come across a lot of those kinds of folks.

KRISTI: I used to be one of those kinds of folks.

LINDSAY: Ah! You were a teacher! How long were you a teacher?

KRISTI: I taught for fifteen years. I taught K through 12 education and I’m certified as a music teacher. I still hold that certification but, in every school that I was in, I also was responsible for the drama program.

LINDSAY: Right. So, this is something that you have firsthand knowledge of.

KRISTI: Yes, and it’s near and dear to my heart.

LINDSAY: And near and dear to your heart, that’s awesome. But let’s go back. So, we’ve got the education piece, but then you also have a stage hand piece.

KRISTI: I do.

LINDSAY: Let’s talk about that.

KRISTI: Well, I started working as a recording engineer when I was in college the first time through. I have a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence University and worked as a recording engineer because I was a music student. Got a summer job working at Interlochen Michigan at the National Arts Camp there as a recording engineer and the guy who was next to me running a follow spotlight for the Broadway musical that we did with the students there ended up being my first boss on my first Broadway tour thirty years later. So, it all kind of comes back around. I really think this is what I was destined to do and, now, I’m making a point to reach out to people to help educate them about how they can do things more safely – because nothing is ever 100 percent safe but there are things that we can do that don’t necessarily have to cost a fortune that can make it much safer for ourselves and for our students and for our patrons.

LINDSAY: We can subtitle this podcast “How Not to Kill Yourself and Your Students.”

KRISTI: Exactly. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying, “Hey! I think I’ll go kill a student today!” or “I’m going to go make an audience member trip!” No.

LINDSAY: Nobody goes to school and says, “Oh, you know, maybe we shouldn’t wield that power tool around, flip it around by its cord. You know, maybe we shouldn’t do that.”

KRISTI: Not a good idea.

LINDSAY: Not a good idea. Okay. So, why did the backstage world call you, you think?

KRISTI: It was just something I started to do because I enjoyed it and the teaching situation here in Wisconsin because of political reasons that are not germane to this podcast but things happened and, about a decade ago, I stopped teaching and became a full-time stage hand. We have a large performing arts center here in Appleton – one of the best in the world, in my humble opinion – so I’ve had a chance to work with everything from the local dance company to Broadway stars, people that you would recognize from television, folks who have an international reputation of being fantastic performers because they are fantastic performers and, because the stage hand’s local, the IATSE local that I’m a member of is a mixed local, we’re expected to be able to do whatever it is that’s necessary to make that show happen. So, some days I’m in there scraping gum off the floor and the next day I’m helping Jesus in the quick change booth. It doesn’t matter; it’s all part of the job.

LINDSAY: Well, it means that every day is different.

KRISTI: Very much so.

LINDSAY: And what’s it like – because I know that some of our listeners would love just to hear a smidgen of that – what’s it like to go on a Broadway tour?

KRISTI: A lot of work. A lot of work. You are constantly in motion – whether it’s getting the show from city to city or training the new people who are working backstage in the new venue or helping your performers to make sure that they can do their best job or repairing something or finding a component that you need that was custom-made at the shop in New York City but you’re in Calgary and you need to find something there to do whatever to make it happen, it’s constant motion but it’s also really thrilling because, when you see the reactions from the audience members and you realize that you’re bringing a piece of Broadway to them, that’s a wonderful experience.

LINDSAY: And particularly in some places that don’t have access to New York.

KRISTI: Well, one of the things I was involved with was a week-long tour of Canadian hockey arenas on the western coast of Canada which was both beautiful and exhausting.

LINDSAY: I’m sorry for you!

KRISTI: Oh, no, no, no.

LINDSAY: No, no, no; as a Canadian, I can say that.

KRISTI: Well, picture 4,000 people standing up and screaming along with Mama Mia. It was a marvelous time.

LINDSAY: Oh, that’s awesome! Oh, I love it. Love it!

So, you did your master’s thesis on theatre safety in high schools, is that right?

KRISTI: I did, I did.

LINDSAY: Why?

KRISTI: Well, I have a dear friend who’s a theatre teacher here in Wisconsin and, a couple of years ago, I was at the statewide music teachers’ convention and was told, “Did you hear what happened?” He was directing a show and they went into an old vaudeville house. Now, many theatres in the Midwest, many small towns, midsized towns in the Midwest, have a theatre that was part of the vaudeville circuit a hundred years ago, and many of these have been beautifully, lovingly restored. He took his high school students to this community theatre – the beautiful vaudeville house – which has a trap door in it. They opened the trap door and one of his students fell through it and was seriously injured because of it and I thought, “If this person who I know is a phenomenal performer – I’ve seen him on stage dozens of times, I know where his heart is, I know he’s a fantastic teacher – if this kind of tragedy can happen under his watch, it could happen to anybody. What can I do to help my fellow music teachers, my fellow drama educators know what can we do to make this safer? What can we do to prevent this from happening again?”

When I went back to school to finish my master’s degree and I needed a thesis topic, that’s what I proposed. “What do we know – or what don’t we know – about theatre safety?” One of the most important things that I discovered was the typical person who is teaching drama has never had a course on theatre safety because the typical person – at least in the United States – who is teaching drama, especially extracurricular drama, is the music teacher or an English teacher or a guidance counselor or a parent who just has a love for theatre.

LINDSAY: It’s true. I can count on seventeen hands and four sets of toes about the number of teachers who I’ve come in contact with who are onstage experts and I can count on one hand maybe who are offstage experts.

KRISTI: Yeah, there are not a lot of us out here, and there are not a lot of people that are focusing or talking with the high school and elementary and middle schools because there’s more money to be made at the professional level and there’s kind of an assumption of “well, it’s the kids, they’ll recover.”

Actually, I heard of an incident and the drama director actually said to me, “I was really glad it was so and so because I knew I wouldn’t get sued.” But the person broke their ankle and that’s horrible and we don’t want that to happen.

LINDSAY: Okay. So, let’s get into this. Let’s get into what are the most common mistakes or misconceptions about theatre safety that you have seen or you have heard?

KRISTI: Well, the most common thing that I find is that people don’t understand the equipment that they have and the equipment is not maintained properly. The equipment that we use in a theatre – and particular in a counterweight rigging system if you’ve got one in your space, and many schools do – if you don’t understand how that system works, and if it’s not properly maintained, it’s very easy to have something go wrong. I’ve been involved with buildings of schools where the administrators refused to put one in because they didn’t know that we had people who were able to come in and take care of it the way it needs to be taken care of.

There was this thing that happened about a decade ago called ETCP. Have you heard of that?

LINDSAY: No, I haven’t.

KRISTI: ETCP was an industry started certification program. You have to have a certain number of hours of actual experience doing rigging or doing electrics. There is a couple of versions of it; one is for theatre riggers, another one is for entertainment electricians. You have to have a certain number of hours of experience actually doing that at a professional level. You apply to take the exam through plasa.org and, if you pass the exam – and the exam is designed so that approximately the top third of professional riggers and the top third of professional theatre electricians should be able to pass it – it is not an easy thing. It is very much like having a master’s degree level of that subject.

LINDSAY: Wow.

KRISTI: So, you want to find somebody who’s an ETCP-certified theatre rigger to come in and take a look at your theatre. There is over 600 of them across the US and Canada. The other thing you want to ask is: “How much experience do you have inspecting schools?” Find somebody who has inspected hundreds of schools.

One of the things I learned when I was out on tours, you know, we think a theatre has a proscenium and it’s got some curtains and it’s got some stuff hanging overhead. Well, no two theatres are exactly the same. Even the Centennial Halls in Canada that were built around the same time using the same basic floor plan have differences. You want somebody who has been in a lot of different places so they know what the different things that you tend to find in theatres, different architects do things certain ways, different companies tend to do their installations certain ways so that, when that inspector comes in to take a look at your theatre, they’ll know what should be there based on what they see there. A really good one is they’re also able to offer training not only to the teacher who is leading the drama program but have the music teacher come in, have the band director come in, have the speech teacher come in, have the debate coach come in, have anybody who uses that space – including community members and students – come in and get training from the ETCP-certified rigger about how to use the equipment that you have in your stage.

LINDSAY: I think that this is a really excellent point and it also gets into another thing I want to talk about – what are the basic rules that every theatre teacher should be following? One of them is, if you are going into your theatre, you are a new teacher and, you know, perhaps a grant was had, perhaps it’s a new building and there’s this equipment that you don’t know how to use, get training! Get inspected and get training.

KRISTI: Yes.

LINDSAY: I really like your notion of “Hey! It’s not just the drama teacher!” Anybody who is using the stage should be in on this inspection and community members because the one question which I’m sure a lot of people would have are, “Oh, I couldn’t afford to bring someone like that in!” or “I’m in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t bring someone in.” But, if there is, if it’s a community thing, if it’s a more than one department thing, that spreads it around, doesn’t it?

KRISTI: Schools usually have money for safety issues.

LINDSAY: Ah, true enough, true enough!

KRISTI: And schools often have money for in-service, for teacher in-service training. In my fifteen years of being a music teacher, there were a handful of trainings that were actually applicable to what I was doing in a music classroom – most of it was “we’re going to go and talk about our reading textbook selection” which is great – I love to have a voice on those kinds of things – but it’s not really what I’m doing in my classroom. Our theatres in schools are community theatres. The community comes in. The parents come in to see what’s going on. The local Kiwanis or Lion’s Club may rent it for a meeting. There’s more than just the students that are using that facility and I’ve always been a very big believer in having the students that you’ve got operating the equipment to the extent that they are safely able to do so.

One of the jobs that I had, I taught in a middle school, but we used a high school for our performances and it’s a full counterweight system – beautiful, beautiful brand new facility here in Appleton – and I was told, “Well, I don’t know about having those thirteen-year-olds running the counterweight system and I said, “I feel very confident that I’ve got students who can do it, but I’m also putting a lightweight on it for them to move.” They’re moving maybe a 50-pound object instead of a 500-pound object. So, it’s teaching the students how to do the task that is appropriate for their age level and appropriate for their skill ability so that they get a chance to do all of these different things.

LINDSAY: I like that, too. Make sure that, if your students are using equipment or using aspects of your stage, that it is age-appropriate and it is skill level appropriate.

KRISTI: Yes, exactly.

LINDSAY: I just want to go back because we kind of went over that website very quickly. Where can teachers who are looking for an inspector for their school, where should they go?

KRISTI: The website is etcp.plasa.org and that will bring up all of the information about the certification and then there’s a link on there that says, “Find ETCP-certified technicians.” You can search by state, by province, by whatever it is that you want. Then, you can contact that individual. Most of them have contact information on that site. Again, you want to ask them: “How many high schools have you inspected?” You’re looking for a number somewhere in the hundreds.

LINDSAY: Awesome. We’re also going to put that link in our show notes.

KRISTI: Beautiful!

LINDSAY: Ya!

So, first of all, get inspected, get training. Two, making sure that students are using equipment within their ability. What other mistakes are you seeing and how can we turn those into good rules?

KRISTI: I see a lot of very well-intended parents coming in to work on technical issues but they don’t realize that the hardware that you buy at your local big-box store is not intended for theatrical use. Just as a general rule of thumb, for rigging, we never use steel that was made in China. The manufacturing criteria there is a little bit different than it is in the US so we always want to try to buy things that were domestically made. The S-hook that you buy that’s designed for a dog leash is not designed to be used to hang scenery over a stage. There’s specific equipment that we’ve used for decades in theatre that’s designed to be used in theatre that we know will work for theatrical applications and parents don’t know. They don’t know that they don’t know and they put people at risk because of it.

LINDSAY: Okay. So, use pieces, use equipment, use connectors, what-have-you, that are made for theatre purposes.

KRISTI: Right. Buy from a theatrical supplier. One of the great things that happens, and I work for a theatrical supplier, I work for Sapsis Rigging Incorporated out of Philadelphia but, regardless, whatever theatrical supplier you’re using, oftentimes, if you have a problem, then call us up. We can help you solve that problem. You tend to get the wisdom that we’ve accumulated over the decades along with buying the product and there’s not an extra charge for us to help you figure out what it is that you need.

LINDSAY: Well, it’s safety there, too.

KRISTI: Exactly.

LINDSAY: You want people using materials or using equipment, you want them to be safe as well.

KRISTI: Exactly. One of the things that people have become more aware of is, if you’ve got a counterweight system and you have a loading floor where there aren’t railings on the side of the arbors, where you’re reaching out to put the weights on the arbors but there’s no railing there, you should have a fall arrest system so that you can’t fall into the arbors as you’re reaching out with this 25-pound weight two feet into the air to set it on top of the arbor.

LINDSAY: And then, a whole bunch of people in the audience just went, “What? Arbor what?”

KRISTI: Well, the arbor is the weight side of a counterweight system. There’s two sides to it and, if you think of it like a teeter-totter where you need the two sides to balance, the arbor is where you put the weight that is generally made out of steel – sometimes, they’re lead – and that number, the number of weight that’s on the arbor has to balance the number of weight that’s on the batten side which is the thing that you actually see when it’s brought in. If you have a curtain on the batten side that weighs 1,000 pounds, you’ll need to have 1,000 pounds of weight on the arbor.

LINDSAY: It’s all science.

KRISTI: All science, basic physics.

LINDSAY: Basic physics, exactly.

Here’s something to throw in at this moment as we’re talking because there might be people who are sitting there going, “Well, this doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have fancy systems. I have no rigging. My theatre is on the side of a cafeteria. We just basically have teeny tiny lights and this and this and that and that. I don’t need to have this same level of safety.”

KRISTI: Oh.

LINDSAY: How would you address the limited theatre director using a space and still be safe?

KRISTI: A lot of the things are the same though regardless of where your space is. One of the big problems that I see – and I run into this all the time – is people blocking the fire exits.

LINDSAY: Oh, excellent point.

KRISTI: That there’s something in front of the doorway, especially when you’re in a shared space like a gymnatorium, invariably, somebody will set something in front of an exit door and you can’t do that.

We had a horrible thing that happened here in the States a little over a hundred years ago called the Iroquois Theatre Fire. It happened in Chicago. There was a piece of the rigging above the stage that caught fire and, because of how the building was designed, for example, there were locks so that the people who’d bought balcony seats couldn’t get down into the orchestra seats. The doors opened inward. There was no automatic lighting that came on when the power went out in the buildings to help the audience members get out. Over 600 people perished in that fire.

LINDSAY: Oh, my gosh.

KRISTI: You have to be able to get out. So, one of the fundamental rules when I walk into any theatre – or any place that I go into, any public building – is where are the exits? Is there an unblocked way for me to get there?

LINDSAY: That was an awesome point. I love that because it’s very true. We do have many teachers who are working with what they have and what they have is very minimal and we want to make sure that everybody is being safe, you know?

KRISTI: Exactly. Another piece of that is that should have your sets and the curtains in your theatre flame-retarded. Rosco makes some great products for that that are available anywhere that you can mix in with a paint if you’re painting a set or you can mix with water to a certain ratio and spray on your curtains. When somebody comes in to do an inspection of your theatre, that’s one of the things they’ll check for us. “When was the last time these curtains were flame retarded?”

LINDSAY: Excellent point. I really like the whole notion of if you’re painting a set that you can actually just put that into your paint so that it’s not really an extra thing; it’s an included thing.

KRISTI: Exactly.

LINDSAY: What about flat safety? You know, like, what are the kinds of things that teachers need to be thinking about to make sure that the stuff they have onstage is safe?

KRISTI: Well, there are two traditional types of flats. There’s the muslin flat that’s put on a wooden frame and you use the flame-retardant paint to treat that just like you would any other kind of set piece. Or if you’re making Hollywood flats that are all out of wood, again, you use the flame-retardant paint on them. It really doesn’t matter which kind of flat you’re using or what kind of set pieces you’ve got out there. You want to make certain that it’s not going to burn.

As far as just general safety for that, you also want to make certain that you’re using, again, theatrical hardware to assemble and to keep them from falling however you do that – whether you’re using a jack or you’re suspending them from overhead or you’ve got them at an angle so that they’ll self-support. Use good quality theatrical hardware designed for that usage and you’ll have less problems.

LINDSAY: Okay. What else are we talking about here? I know! Power tools.

KRISTI: Yeah.

LINDSAY: Power tools. Let’s talk about how we’re not going to swing the chainsaw around by its electrical cord and what are the basics of power safety at the school level?

KRISTI: Well, just tools and any equipment in general. The manufacturer of that item has some kind of user’s manual. You’ll want to make sure that you get those and you have those available for the students and whoever is using the space to be able to view those manuals, especially with students. You also want to teach them and check them individually, test them individually before you allow them to use the tools on their own.

There’s also this great invention called a “saw stop.” We have injuries and I forget what the exact number is but it’s a significant number of people get injured on table saws. What this device is it senses the electrical response in your body. You may have seen table lamps at home in somebody’s living room where you touch the lamp and the light goes on, you touch the lamp again and the light goes off. Well, the saw stop table saw works on the same premise. When it senses your skin, it immediately stops that saw blade.

LINDSAY: Oh, my gosh! That’s awesome!

KRISTI: It’s tremendous. If you go on their website…

LINDSAY: Okay. It’s called a “saw stop.”

KRISTI: Saw stop, yeah.

LINDSAY: Sorry, I’m just in a little bit…

KRISTI: That’s okay!

LINDSAY: I’ve never heard of that and I think that what an amazing…

KRISTI: Oh, tremendous!

LINDSAY: What an amazing little thing. Sorry, I interrupted you right before you were going to say where people could find it.

KRISTI: Saw stop. I don’t know their website off the top of my head.

LINDSAY: You know what? Don’t worry about it. That’s my job. I think we should have that information. I’ll make sure that goes in the show notes.

KRISTI: Yeah, I can send that to you, and one of the cool things about the saw stop is there’s a replaceable cartridge so, when it fires, it stops that saw blade instantly, then you just go in and replace that cartridge and you’re back up working in a few minutes.

LINDSAY: That’s awesome, and I hope that it goes without saying that teachers know hair back.

KRISTI: Yeah.

LINDSAY: Goggles.

KRISTI: Closed-toed shoes.

LINDSAY: Closed-toed shoes.

KRISTI: And gloves is something else that I should mention. It’s great to wear gloves when you’re handling materials but, sometimes, when you’re working with power tools, those gloves can become drawn into the tool and then draw your hand into the tool so think about the kind of glove you’ve got on. Is it possible that this is going to draw me in? If not, don’t worry about it. But, if it’s going to pull your hand in, it’s better than to take the glove off which seems counterintuitive. You think, “I want to have gloves on all the time to protect my hands,” but, when you’re working with a power tool such as a table saw, you generally don’t want them all.

LINDSAY: It’s basically loose clothing, right?

KRISTI: Yes.

LINDSAY: Anything that’s going to get drawn in to take your limb off, we would like to prevent that.

KRISTI: We don’t want that to happen. Closed-toed shoes are a great idea. On the professional level, we require steel toes in most instances. I know they’re required everywhere across Canada and more employers are requiring them in the US also. That’s not something that you would generally require students to have but students are generally not unloading semi-trucks either but they’re just a good idea and they also make a really kind of cool steel toe that is a rubber sole that will slip on over any other shoe that you have so the school could buy a couple of pairs of those in different sizes and those available for the students that need them.

LINDSAY: I think that’s an awesome idea! That solves a couple of issues, you know. We don’t have to have to have numerous steel-toed shoes in a whole bunch of sizes. We’ve just got this little thing that we can put on over top of shoes.

KRISTI: Right!

LINDSAY: Awesome. I love that! Gee, I’m learning so much.

KRISTI: I’m glad. I’m so glad!

LINDSAY: Sorry, I always have to chide myself. I chide myself sometimes because I listen and we get into these and something happens that’s really cool and I’m like… and I stop talking and it’s like, “Lindsay, this would be the time for you to engage and continue.” I just know how important this is and I know how often I just come across where I’ll walk into a classroom or I’ll walk in, I know a couple of folks who have, you know, lovely shops and that are not being taken care of or used properly and I’m like, “When is this accident going to happen? When is this happening?” – not “if” but “when.”

KRISTI: Well, the truth is, if you do anything long enough, the odds are something bad is going to happen, and we hope that it’s mitigated. We hope that it’s the least of the bad things that might happen so we take extra cautions. We make sure that we wear our safety gear. We wear goggles. We wear gloves. We wear steel-toed shoes. We wear long pants when we’re handling materials that can scrape our legs. We dress appropriately if we’re working outside so that we don’t get sun stroke. Drink a lot of water.

LINDSAY: It’s common sense.

KRISTI: Well, we all know common sense isn’t all that common. Look, none of us were born knowing this, we learned it along the way or we figured it out or somebody older and wiser pointed it out to us and said, “Hey, you know, you really ought to,” and you look at them and go, “Hmm. Yes, you’re right, we really ought to,” and you learn.

LINDSAY: Yeah, for sure.

Okay. Let’s wrap this up by, if you have to put a poster up in a theatre classroom or a school theatre shop, what are the key theatre safety items or rules that must be on that poster?

KRISTI: You know what? I’ll send you something that you can put into the show notes for this because I just created something like that for the theatre where my son’s working at and there’s probably twenty things on there.

LINDSAY: Okay.

KRISTI: There’s a lot.

LINDSAY: Awesome. So, give us three for the listeners at home.

KRISTI: The big ones are prepare yourself. Make sure that you have the safety gear and the knowledge and he training that you need to do the task safely. Make certain that you’re using the right tools to do the task and make certain that you have people around you so that, should an incident happen, should something happen, there is somebody who can call for help, there is somebody can bring the EMTs to your side, there is somebody who can stay with you to make sure that you don’t bleed out on the floor. It’s really prepare yourself, prepare the space, and don’t work alone. Theatre is a collaborative art form. Work with other people, share your knowledge, share your skills, and learn as you go.

LINDSAY: Fantastic. I love that.

Kristi, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I learned new things. I know our listeners learned new things. These are going to be wonderful. I think most of our jam-packed show notes and I really appreciate you taking the time.

KRISTI: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this, Lindsay.

LINDSAY: Oh, thank you, Kristi.

I just thought this was great – so much great information and a lot of things that many of us who are maybe terrified is the right word of implementing tech into our programs or our shows. It’s something that we should not be terrified of. We should take steps to make sure that we are doing some of the things that Kristi talked about.

Want those links? Did I lie? Are there not going to be a lot of links? Absolutely, so go to the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode142.

Before we go, let’s do some THEATREFOLK NEWS.

I just want to direct you to our blog.

October has been an awesome month, if I do say so, and I do. October has been awesome! Why should you check it out? Well, our blog, every single blog post comes with a PDF handout. Take exercises into the classroom in an easy to download, the easy to print fashion.

This month, we’ve been talking communication so there’s a silent communication exercise, an article about students directing their peers, what do student directors need to focus on, and improv – improv is all about communication! What are the top ten tips for teaching improv? Check out blog to find out. That’s theatrefolk.com/blog. You can also check it out in the show notes.

Finally, where, oh, where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every second Tuesday at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on youtube.com/theatrefolk and you can find us on the Stitcher app. You can also subscribe to TFP on iTunes. All you have to do is search for the word: “Theatrefolk.”

And that’s where we’re going to end. Take care, my friends. Take care.

Music credit:”Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.