Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser say the New York theater community wants to help newcomers. Don't worry about bothering established music directors or other professionals with emails. Most remember their own early struggles and are willing to mentor people starting out.
Chapters
There is such a community, and there is such an ethic of everyone who is in theater who, like, has something that could help you out will more often than not will help you.
We help you out, and people want you to come do this. Like, people want new people. I always thought I was bothering everybody. I always thought I was like, here I am, I know there's more than enough, you know, music directors in this town, but I guess I'm just gonna bother you and be really annoying and write you an email because that's so troublesome, you know, which is not the way you want to open your email. Yeah, it's not like that. People want, uh, they want to help you. Successful people want to help people starting out because they know what it was like, you know. That's true across the— I have not met anybody who's successful yet who's like, leave me alone. Some people aren't the most charming personalities sometimes, but it's not a reflection of you, probably. Mm-hmm.