Taylor Pope is a theater arts and technical theater and design double major with dreams of becoming a sound designer on Broadway, and she hopes her website will help her get there.   

“It’s important to have your website because it’s a perfect way of showing who you are without the face to face contact,” Pope said. “I’ve always been a technology person, so it wasn’t hard for me to figure out Wix.”  

Pope presented her session, “Professional Website Design: How it Works” at the 2020 Piedmont Symposium this year, talking about her website on Wix and the importance of having a website. Pope is incredibly versatile in the play world, from working on the soundboard to creating crazy noises for characters as well as directing her own scene for her capstone project. She wants possible future employers to see just how versatile she is, so she stressed the importance of having a website to get ready for the real world. 

Pope has had to do many different things for different plays. For the musical “Cabaret,” Pope was the sound engineer. She had to run the soundboard, make sure the receivers for the mics were working, see that the mics themselves were working, and had to run around to make sure everything was going planned, all with a sprained ankle. For the second show of the year, “Gathering Blue,” she was the sound designer, creating new sounds for the show. She was directing her capstone at the time as well. To be in her position, you have to be pretty versatile, and that is something future employers are looking for, which is why she detailed all of this on her website. 

“I went with a premade layout (on Wix) because it was a lot easier, and then I could edit things to make it specific to me,” she said.

Pope started working on her website in January 2020 for her audition techniques class. She used Wix, a widely used and popular website startup. In her presentation for the Symposium, Pope goes through the ins and outs of her website, showing what she has done for each play that she worked on. She also had a section about who she was, including her contact information in case any possible future employers needed to reach out. 

“I would like to become a sound designer, hopefully in New York, but we’ll see how that goes,” Pope said. 

Pope’s post-grad dreams are to move to New York and become a sound designer on Broadway. She has plenty of experience doing different things for the play community, and this will transfer over to her profession one day as well. 

“Even if things don’t work out the way I planned it, at least I will have this website to help in any way possible.”