My class and I are doing our Capstone project. For capstone we have to figure out a main inquiry question. Mine is how are Broadway musicals normally produced and how will the pandemic affect the future of live theater? Then come up with sub questions, then we have to do research to answer all those sub questions. When I first started to come up with my main inquiry question it was pretty easy because I had a few options in my head for like 3 years, the sub questions were very hard to do I would sit up at night thinking what do I want to know about Broadway if I knew we had to do sub questions I would have started 3 years earlier. 

In the end they turned out kind of well these are my sub questions: How was Broadway before COVID 19? How many tickets were sold on average before COVID and how have ticket sales been after? How will making Broadway shows be different after COVID? How will making Broadway shows be different after COVID? What innovations were created in response to COVID? 

Sometimes it is hard to get information if you do not have a good website to take notes on or you just can’t find a website at all. That is what happened with some of my sub questions so I had to reword them and I had lots of good websites to choose from. Once we have done that we have to come up with someone to do our interview for my class and I just finished that step next we have to put our research together so we can make a script, for the presentation we get to choose how we present what we chose from we video, ted talk, or ignite.

The last step I did so far was the interview. My topic is Broadway so I chose my grandpa (Roger Hess) because he is a Broadway producer. I thought it would be really weird to interview my grandpa. I was right but it went by quickly because I made it. Before I interviewed him I had to come up with 10 – 15 questions no more no less. It was not too hard coming up with interview questions but for a lot I ended up either changing them or rewording them. 

During my interview I used my mom’s computer to do face time on and used my Chromebook to take notes. I had a lot of notes but sometimes it was hard to write what he was saying because a lot of the time he said the things, and some things he just could not remember. But at the end of the interview I looked over my notes and I had a lot of new information to put in my slides. For my questions I did a lot of questions about him and his job then for the rest I asked about the shows and how his cast has been affected by Covid 19. 

These are my interview questions: Why did you want to be a producer

• How many years have you been a producer 

• how many shows have you produced and what is your favorite one so far

• What  accomplishments are you most proud of?

• What are the day to day responsibilities you have? 

• What is the easiest thing about your job

• What is the hardest thing about your job

• Have you been nominated for any awards or won any 

• How did Covid change how your shows  were practicing and performing

• Are you using any new technologies to communicate with the actors 

• How has Covid affected the attitude of the actors or actresses being on stage and the stage crew

• How has Covid affected what you were working on 

•  How have you been making a living? 

• How do you think Broadway will look after Covid 

•  Do you think that Broadway will recover

My favorite part of this project so far was probably doing the interview because I liked coming up with questions and emailing my grandpa like I am a super famous interviewer. I also loved finding out new things about my grandpa that I never knew about him.

My goals for the next step which is writing the script are that the narrative is long enough to fit the amount of slides I need so that I don’t go over the limit or try to speak really fast so I can fit information, and that when I put it into the actual script it fits the amount of time which is 15 seconds, to make sure it is 15 seconds I can put a stopwatch and if it is less or more I will either cut out some words or add a little more information. In the end I hope I accomplish these goals.