This Week: OVO!

Little Bean Prepares For Her Big Day

OVO! Image courtesy Cirque du Soleil

My phone text keeps going off. It’s Little Bean, sending me messages. She’s working hard to prepare for her upcoming interviews with members of Cirque du Soleil and she’s shooting me interview questions for me to look over.

I’m proud of her that she’s taking the assignment seriously. So many of you have asked me what, exactly, the process is to prepare for and then write with a nine year old so given that the Cirque event is right around the corner, I thought perhaps you’d like to see how it’s done.

First some background. Little Bean is a Kid Reporter and part of the Manchester Ink Link Inkubator Program and her focus is music. She’s had the opportunity to meet and greet with many bands and musicians this past year, and several of those stories you can find right here in the archive of Day By Day.

Besides this week’s big Cirque event, Little Bean has a list of musicians we’ve been in contact with that she hopes to interview, including own music teacher, a band out of Maine called Sorrowfuse, a band we’re going to meet next month called Holy Wars and there’s some others.

For the Cirque show, Little Bean landed press passes to tour the production backstage, watch some performers practice before the show and most importantly, interview some members. She wants to interview the band members, and is sending me questions like “Can you play without looking” and “Why did you decide to play the instrument you do.”

In general, this is how she does it. Once we secure VIPs or meet and greets, we’ll sit down and watch and/or listen to the musician or band, and then we’ll read up on them a bit. She’ll make some notes as we do. The next step is for her to send me a series of questions based on her research. In the case of a longer interview that was done in writing, like she did for Freeze the Fall, she develops a set of questions for the whole band and then questions for individual members.

The the case of Cirque, since we’re not certain exactly who we’ll be interviewing, she’s kept the questions more general.

Once we agree on the questions I’ll transcribe them into a word doc in interview format. She’ll bring a notebook and phone recorder to the event for the interview and I’ll be in charge of pictures and keeping her focused!

Then we’ll take the material home, sift through it and pic out certain themes or questions we thought were answered best. I’ll transcribe the interview, we’ll both read over it and we’re off to the races!

If she continues down this path, there will come a time when she does the writing herself and my role will be regulated to cab driver and ticket purchaser!

There’s a few smaller logistical issues we’ll have to deal with for the show like what to bring, how to capture the interview, what to wear, that sort of thing. And I talk to her often about being professional and courteous.

But I think bands and performers get a kick out of being interviewed by a kid. Not that Cirque du Soleil needs any publicity from the likes of us, but having a kid reporter tell the story is never bad press. And all these places know that her old man is an experienced journalist so nobody has said no to her yet!

My phone pings again and it’s another questions; this one, “Do you ever get scared being so high on the trampoline?” Time to get to work. Stay tuned for our event coverage of OVO. Little Bean’s story is going to be fun!