{"id":778,"date":"2015-02-10T19:47:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T19:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olver.me\/?p=778"},"modified":"2026-03-01T16:46:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T16:46:00","slug":"a-guy-a-girl-and-shakespeare-my-blind-date-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/02\/a-guy-a-girl-and-shakespeare-my-blind-date-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"A Guy, A Girl and Shakespeare &#8211; My Blind Date Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When a theatre company tweets the following, what do you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">If you&#39;d like to be set up with a fellow theatre-lover, apply here to take part in ATG Blind Date! <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/RutafPxUUs\">http:\/\/t.co\/RutafPxUUs<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/theatre?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#theatre<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/dating?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#dating<\/a><\/p>&mdash; ATGtickets (@ATGTICKETS) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ATGTICKETS\/status\/562232243310321664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 2, 2015<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>You apply to go on a Blind Date, of course!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Why?!&#8221; I hear you ask. Curiosity. I definitely don&#8217;t get to the theatre as often as I&#8217;d like, and I&#8217;m single, so why on earth not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, after an email from ATG&#8217;s&nbsp;<em>Content and Social Media Executive<\/em>, Lauren Ball, I ventured to the Noel Coward Theatre in Central London last night to see&nbsp;<em><a href=\"http:\/\/shakespeareinlove.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shakespeare In Love<\/a>&nbsp;<\/em>with my blind date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had no idea who my date would be (because, it is a&nbsp;<em>blind<\/em> date), what to expect from the performance or the date itself. I was a nervous wreck!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I arrived to work yesterday in a shirt and tie, which is a lot smarter than usual. My boss asked me if I was off to a job interview! So, of course I had to tell him the reason I was dressed to impress. He thought it was via Tinder, but when I explained it was actually organised via Twitter, I&#8217;m not sure if that made it better or worse&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I arrived a bit earlier than expected, collected my ticket then waited in the foyer for the Duty Manager and my date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My date walked through the door collected her ticket in a similar brown envelope. We spotted each other and check our tickets to discover we were each other&#8217;s date!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Becca and I were shown to the bar by the Duty Manager, where we were given complimentary drinks and got to know each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It turned out we had a fair amount in common; I went to university near her hometown, she&#8217;s also been involved in Scouting and we both didn&#8217;t expect to be chosen for the blind date! We were talking for so long that we didn&#8217;t hear the announcement to take our seats in the main house and realised with only a few minutes to spare! When we got into the house, we found we had some fantastic seats, with a great view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/shakespeareinlove.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shakespeare In Love<\/a>&nbsp;<\/em>itself was very enjoyable. Being the geek that I am, I was very intrigued by the set design and how the main centrepiece moved to create fantastic spaces on stage. And of course, I noticed that no-one was wearing mics and instead they had off stage mics picking up all the vocals, speech and instruments.<br>\nThe cast were fantastic as well, certainly making me believe that I was actually seeing a young William Shakespeare on stage!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Becca had seen the production before Christmas but with a different cast and sung its praises. This gave me high expectations of the performance ahead for us, and fortunately for her it certainly exceeded them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the interval, I found some cards laying around the auditorium. They had the&nbsp;<em>Shakespeare In Love&nbsp;<\/em>logo on them, with a moustache. The idea was that you took a selfie with it and shared it along with a hashtag. We decided we&#8217;d do it after the show as a momento of our evening and share it with ATG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Had a wonderful evening with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/beccaba1nbr1dge?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@beccaba1nbr1dge<\/a> courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ATGTICKETS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@ATGTICKETS<\/a>! Here&#39;s our <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/shakeover?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#shakeover<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/jGc5egJzeP\">pic.twitter.com\/jGc5egJzeP<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Oliver Needham (@OliverNeedham) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OliverNeedham\/status\/564909894659502082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 9, 2015<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We did a very 21st century thing after this photo; exchanged Twitter follows instead of phone numbers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After we parted ways for the evening, Lauren at ATG sent us a &#8216;feedback&#8217; form for the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were asked about our first impressions, what we talked about, how the date ended and about our date&#8217;s theatre etiquette. I&#8217;m pretty sure I was fidgeting throughout the first half!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As well as our date at the Noel Coward Theatre, two others were happening at the same time. After a bit of digging around on Twitter, I found that one was at&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OddJazzShoes\/status\/565176248897646592\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Once<\/a><\/em> and the other at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chipdewey\/status\/564941640742498304\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>My Night With Reg<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lauren has&nbsp;posted the feedback from everyone on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atgtickets.com\/blog\/atg-blind-date\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ATG blog<\/a>, and even added&nbsp;our selfie to it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The summary of my first ever blind date; it was a fantastic production with wonderful company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a theatre company tweets the following, what do you do? You apply to go on a Blind Date, of course! &#8220;Why?!&#8221; I hear you ask. Curiosity. I definitely don&#8217;t get to the theatre as often as I&#8217;d like, and I&#8217;m single, so why on earth not? So, after an email from ATG&#8217;s&nbsp;Content and Social&#8230; <a class=\"moretag btn btn-sm btn-outline-oliver\" href=\"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/02\/a-guy-a-girl-and-shakespeare-my-blind-date-experience\/\"> Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,23],"tags":[102,108,139,164,165],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal","category-theatre","tag-atg","tag-blind-date","tag-noel-coward-theatre","tag-selfie","tag-shakespeare-in-love","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/B9b2jGMIUAAFQEF.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":958,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions\/958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliverneedham.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}