Since I’ve been trying to be more involved in SAG-AFTRA events, I’m trying to not say no to things when they fit into my schedule. So when the NextGen Performers committee posted that they’d be doing a trivia night on Tuesday I figured that I should go. I don’t know if I’ve ever gone to an organized trivia night before but it sounded fun. I tried to get some friends to come with me, but nobody seemed to be able to so I planned on just being there on my own.
But right after I arrived, my friend Rayshell walked in! I hadn’t texted her since she lives on the other side of town and usually can’t come over to my side of town after work, but she heard about the trivia night and also wants to be more involved in the union so she made the effort to go. It was so exciting to see each other there when we weren’t expecting it!
And I’m glad she was there (and had a friend with her) because it turned out that this trivia night was a team event. We ended up with a group of 4 and named our group The Misfits. There were lots of really clever names, but we were rushed to come up with a name because we missed that part of the instructions so we didn’t have any funny puns with ours.
At first, the trivia night seemed a bit complicated but I think that’s because we missed some of the instructions. But we picked up the idea pretty quickly. There were 4 rounds that each had 4 questions plus a bonus question. You bet a certain number of points for each question based on how you feel about your answer. And in the first round, we got all the questions right and were in 2nd place!
But after that amazing first round, we hit a slump. Rounds 2 and 3 didn’t go that great for us but it seemed like other groups were struggling too. And after the last round but before the last bonus question, we were all updated on how the scores looked. We were pretty close to the middle of the pack and the last bonus question was one where you could bet up to 20 points, but you risked losing those points if you got the answer wrong.
We figured we had nothing to lose so we bet 20 points and tried hard to think of the answer for the last bonus question. The question was which movie was the only one where Harrison Ford was nominated for an Oscar. All of us immediately thought “The Fugitive” but we weren’t rushing to answer. But then one member of our group remembered that he was in the movie “Witness” and that was probably the answer. So we put that down, turned our answer in, and hoped for the best.
Once everything was done, the MC was announcing the scores starting with last place. Once he got through half the groups we were so excited to know we were in the top half of the groups. Then he announced the 3rd place winner and that still wasn’t us so we knew we were in the top 2! We couldn’t believe it, but somehow we came back from the middle to end up in second place!
There was a basket of prizes to choose from and I got a SAG-AFTRA key chain. A lot of the stuff in the basket was similar to what we got in our swag bags at the convention so I didn’t really care too much on what I got. But just knowing that we got second place was awesome enough for me! I really wasn’t thinking we’d do that well and I think the entire group was shocked when we realized that we were in the top 2.
Even though winning second place in trivia was amazing, what was even better was getting to hang out with Rayshell again. Neither of us knew the other would be there, but fortunately there was a lot of downtime between trivia questions for us to catch up. It was like one of our happy hour hangouts! And this time there was free food since the NextGen Performers events have free food (actors always love free stuff!). We will still do another happy hour hangout soon, but at least we won’t feel as guilty about how much time will pass since we got to see each other this week.
After trivia was done, I had to get home. I’m still getting over being sick and I wanted to get home to get some sleep. But most people were leaving once the winners were announced. This mixer was more of a trivia night than a hangout night, but that was ok with me. It was something new for me and I had a great time. And even though it wasn’t the most actor related event, it was still a great night out with my union friends and that is always a win for me.
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