BS: One of the the interesting things about your job is that you're managing the science theatre but you also perform in the plays and shows. What's that like?
DB: Um well it's got some advantages because if something goes wrong you tend to know what it is. So you've got the advantage of knowing, because I've done it quite a long time you know that if you press a button, it doesn't work usually if you press it again it will work. But if you haven't been there very long because you haven't done many shows and you do it, press a button and it doesn't work it tends to panic you more. And the more shows you do, obviously you get more used to things that can and can't go wrong so you just need to manage those. But, occasionally, you find that if you - one of the problems we have is that if you come in, - like the week before last we came in, we set up 3 different themes and I did - some in the science theatre some in the lab and some in the planetarium. I did 3 different things in the same week. Occasionally, because I've done a lot of the themes before - that doesn't often happen - that doesn't usually happen. Usually you do one thing a week, you know, like this week I'm doing the science theatre, another week I may be in the planetarium. Because they were a bit short staffed I was doing all 3. And they were all different age ranges as well so, you know. So occasionally, if it's a new show that's a big problem because you don't want to have to set the science theatre up because sometimes you have to set the science theatre up then you have to do the training for the show and then you'll do the show after it. Which is probably what will happen on Monday. I'll have to set up the Science Theatre then we have to go in for the training for it then we have to do the show afterwards. But as well as looking after that we have to make sure the other two areas are set up as well. There's a workshop in the lab we have to make sure that's set up and the planetarium is all running before we actually go and do our shows.
So, one of the big problems I find is that quite often you haven't actually got time to sit down and think about what you're going to do and think about what you've done afterwards, which is really important to a sort of - I think it's quite important to try and sit down and reflect on what you've done. What tends to happen is you do it and go and then you're going off to do something else, you know. So that's - I think that's one of the big problems, you haven't actually got time to sit down and think about - what you're going to do and what you've done. And if it's a show you've done year after year - you, you sort of got it locked up here somewhere and you stick a sheet up on the wall that's got the - headings on. You run through it, you watch somebody else do it or you run through it in training and then they tend to click back into place and you just pick up where you left off. And if something new's happened you may add it in or if the group is slightly different you add it in so. You might put different things in different wording or - you might add something in about - you know when we're doing the Material show key stage 3 when Concorde crashed they, they lined it all up all the tires and the tanks of Kevlar so, you you add that into the show because they mentioned Kevlar in the show. So, things you pick up in your everyday life you tend to add in to it as well.