Student Blog: How Theater Background Saved My Late Night Radio Show

It's only been three weeks since the new semester started, and I'm already drowning. This is my last year at the Radio Arts and Entertainment program at BCIT, so I knew it was going to be tough. And on my first day of the new semester, I found out that I was going to face my biggest challenge yet. I will have to host my own late night radio show.

This media program that I am taking really emphasizes the importance of learning from practical experience. They want us to be ready for the industry the moment we graduate. That is why for our final year, we have to work at our school’s radio station, Evolution 1079. And in the spring, we will have to go out and do an internship at a real media company. So obviously, this will be a very very busy school year.

Now, this is how this semester works. Two days a week, I have to go to normal classes from 8.30 am to 3.30 pm. Then on the remaining days of the week, I have to work at the radio station. The jobs that each student does were selected at random, and they will be rotated every two weeks. For example, one person could be a podcast producer on the first week, then switch to social media manager on the third. So once the schedule was out, I immediately checked my first job, and I gasped when I found out that I will be the radio personality for the 7-11 pm slot. That was a tough slot, because a lot of the listeners are at the end of their days. They are tired, they might have had a bad day, and they could be listening on their commute home. So I have to be that person who keeps their spirits high for the rest of their night.

There was one thing that I didn’t expect before going into this job. I always thought that there will be a lot of people working on a radio show. I thought there would at least be a producer, a writer, and an audio engineer in the studio during a live show. And in a big radio station, there might be. But when you are working at a small radio station, the radio host is responsible for all of those things. So when it was time for me to go on-air, I had to be ready with the topics that I wanted to say, the music that I had to play, and all of the technical stuff. And it was crazy. Even though the listeners would only listen to me for four hours a day, the work started way before that. And that’s when I felt grateful for having a theater background.

Here’s the thing, when you perform at the theater, you know that you have to multitask. You have to learn your script, and deliver it well. Sometimes, you need to do quick-changes and run to the wing to make your entrance. You have choreographies and marks to hit, and at the same time, you also need to move the props in and out of the stage, all without breaking character. And I feel like, that's exactly what I had to do during my time as a radio host. When I decided on the topic that I wanted to talk about, I had to think about how my character would say it. Of course in this case, I was playing myself, so it’s not like I had to come up with crazy backstories for a whole new character. But still, I was performing for an audience, so I really had to think about how the listeners would receive whatever I was saying. I had to enunciate and make sure that my audience understood every single word. Also, in theater, we had to act big to reach the audience that was sitting in the back row. Well in radio, I can’t see my own audience, so I had to make sure that they got my intentions just by using my voice. On top of that, I also had to multitask. I had to turn on my own mic, pull down the sliders on the sound board, and play the next song, while introducing the artists and the name of the song. It’s like I was doing a choreography, and I had to master it so everything could go smoothly.

With all of those happening at the same time, mistakes were bound to happen. But thank God for all of those times on stage, because now I have the mentality of “the show must go on”. When I slipped, I just continued as if nothing happened. There was one time when I totally lost focus and I started speaking without connecting to the material. I realized I couldn't understand what I was saying. So, during the commercial break, I decided to do some stretches and vocal exercises to reconnect with my own body, then recentered myself before going back behind the mic. And I learned that from theater. There were so many transferable skills that I can use, and for that, I really had to thank my community theater for allowing me to have all of my theater experiences when I was younger.

After two weeks of hosting my own radio show, I finally wrapped up my run on September 22, 2023. I said goodbye to my listeners, and it was bittersweet. I went in with no expectations, but I ended up enjoying it. A friend asked me if I would do it again, and I said… maybe… if the schedule fits. It was such a fun experience. And it brought me back to ten years ago, when I had to stand alone, center stage with a spotlight on me, saying my lines in my bright green costume. It was nerve-racking but exciting. And that feeling will never get old.