Neptune is similar in composition to Uranus

Posted by Alex on Apr 25, 2009 in Featured Articles | Comments

I meant that title. Literally. It has been an eventful week. The weather has been wonderful so i am starting to meet with some amazing people from the Halifax area. Though every now again something seems to bring in the odd black cloud. A few weeks ago i visited the Neptune Theatre. I had emailed them the day before to say that i was going to pop by. When i arrived they looked at me puzzled and spoke to me like i had just been scraped of their shoe. Not a good start. After a few heated emails i moved on from that and contacted the Neptune School Director and explained what i was doing in the Halifax Area. In my email to him i stated:

I was made aware of your school by one of your students. I was hoping with your permission to come along to some of your spring classes. I assume that the main aim of your students is to build on their skills which will help then unlock doors to a career in the theatre. Well without sounding to metaphorical “I have a lot of keys to these doors”.

I waited.. and i waited and then 8 days later i got a reply.

I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. It has been another crazy week here at the theatre school. Unfortunately, we do not allow people to observe our classes. We even discourage parents from sitting in as it limits the children’s involvement.

I explained again that i am not here to observe i am here to see if you students are any good and if so i could put them in contact with a few people that could further their career. Still it got me nowhere and after going back and fourth i just gave up on it.

We do have a pre-professional training program and those students are here for a total of 16 hours per week, so we don’t always have students in the building. And as I stated previously our classes are not open.

So all in all they offer pre professional classes and they wont allow a professional to come in and help them go from pre professional to professional. That’s a mouthful but i am sure you are getting the idea. Overall in my personal and professional opinion i have found working with the Neptune Theatre very difficult. I have worked with some of the most amazing venues in the past including the Albert Hall in Kensington and Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre, Westminster and never have i seen a venue act in such a way that they have. I just hope for the sake of others that they woke up on the wrong side of bed the day they met me. If not then i would recommend they buck up their ideas.

Well that was enough for me. Apparently its never enough. Many of you will remember the post i wrote just a few weeks ago entitled “HRM Talent is not too Shabby”. I had great feedback from that post and i had already began offering my support to one student even after a rather unneeded out burst to me on twitter. I received an email from Stacie Lynn and her mother asking for my help in making a career for Stacie as so far they had got nowhere. So i offered my thoughts and opinions and said what i thought would be a good starting point. As i advise most performers it is best to begin with your public image.

One thing you have done is you have promoted Stacie on many sites. This is good to a certain degree but most of these sites that offer this kind of service scream out “i am an amateur performer”. There are thousands of people on these sites, so how are you going to stand out from the crowd? So the first step is to set yourself up an official site. A blog would be best.

Funny enough they did so. Even though they had not consulted me for over a week since i sent an email to them explaining that i had a number of contacts that would be able to create what they wanted and that my hosting company was very good and i could probably get them a very reasonable deal. Don’t get me wrong its a free world but when someone says to you in a professional status “i think you should try this..” then you cut them off and go ahead and do as you please is not a good career move. They followed many things that i had stated but in all the wrong way. Lets see how many people find your site with the meta keywords being div and align. (technical joke). Still they must think highly of me as they did follow my advice. Best of luck with it though and thanks for the abusive messages this morning and insulting my age.

What i say to everyone who turns round and says these things is that you find me another 20 year old who within 5 years has had his own national organisation and sat on the board as a director for several projects then you can insult me. It seems its becoming very clear why Stacie has been turned down time after time from radio stations etc and with deals being signed to play her music in China and Austrailia its not seems likely this would be a likely candidate for any upcoming events. I hope that, not only is the “Age of majority” an official step its also a literal step.

Its a shame that things ended up like this because we are at the early stages of confirming the Pride of Central Somerset 2010 and i was considering looking for a performer to take from Canada to the United Kingdom to perform. It looks like my search will have to continue.