A One-Way Ticket to Laughs at Sheng Wang Performance

Blog by Harlow Polonio

Last night, I had the wonderful opportunity to see Sheng Wang perform at DPAC as a Performing Arts Ambassador.

The show was amazing – the other Ambassadors got to listen to my tea-kettle laughter throughout the entire show – but what I found even more fun was shadowing the DPAC Ticketing staff beforehand. As DPAC Ambassadors, 29 other high school students and I receive various opportunities to see shows and shadow different DPAC departments to find out more about the theatre industry.
 

I was told before the show that I would be shadowing the Ticketing staff. I had gone to the Ticketing booth a few times as an audience member to collect tickets from Will Call, and in my head my shift was going to be quiet and mellow, with not much going on besides retrieving the occasional envelope of tickets for someone. When I arrived at DPAC, my experience was the near opposite of that.

After being led through many different winding hallways, I reached the Ticketing booth and met the absolutely lovely staff there. They made me feel instantly at home and were incredibly cheerful and funny (I laughed almost as much in the Ticketing booth as I did during the show). All four of the staff there were masters of their craft, clicking through computer programs I couldn’t even begin to comprehend to fix any problems that audience members had.

I helped out by retrieving Will Call tickets and forms for audience members to sign, but mostly I was in awe of the staff working there. They worked quickly, finding different troubleshooting methods when a patron couldn’t access their ticket, and, although each staff member mainly worked individually with one audience member at a time, when an audience member was encountering a large issue, the staff came together and worked as a team to find a solution. I was super impressed at how seamless their system was, and I definitely have a new appreciation for all that the Ticketing booth does for DPAC patrons!