Tag: summer

Post #2: A Sapphire Summer!

Hello All! Although my internship is fully virtual this summer, it is and continues to be great! To look on the bright side, I am safe with my family and have a good amount of time to spend with them, which might not have been possible if the internship was in person. Additionally, I have gained many technical skills to complete my internship tasks at a satisfactory level, including communication through multiple social media platforms. Overall, I feel happy to continue to do this internship virtually.

The World of Work, like the rest of the Brandeis faculty and staff, has been very supportive this summer, especially with its virtual aspect. Both advisors and mentors have made me feel comfortable sharing my thoughts and feelings during my internship, from dropping in a friendly check-in email to virtual conversations through Zoom! It is good to know that I have a team of wonderful people who I can reach out to whenever I need a helping hand.

Like I said before, I have gained many skills while working for the Sapphire organization, and continue to strengthen them every day. For example, I am on the verge of mastering Adobe Software named InDesign, which is primarily used for illustration and advertisement purposes, along with the creation of long documents. Knowledge on how to use this software is crucial while I hold an active position in the organization, seeing as they will be using this software to create our publications such as our literary magazines and artbooks. I am very excited to start putting together our upcoming art book, “Black And…” which will highlight creations made by black and brown artists and writers. This artbook will be hosting a variety of art, including poems, prose, visual art, etc.

Another wonderful aspect of this internship is its flexibility. We usually meet once or twice a week virtually and discuss various information that consists of tasks for the creation of the artbook and keeping our social media platforms up-to-date while also engaging with our followers. Most of the time, I have 2-3 tasks assigned to me each week to complete, which to me is great because it is a large amount of time and I also really enjoy doing what I have been assigned.

With school starting back up in August, I just hope I can still carve out time and dedicate myself to the work that the Sapphire organization is doing to uplift black and brown voices through the creative arts. This is a thought that weighs heavy on my mind, but I have no doubt that I and the Sapphire team can figure something out. On the bright side, school is starting back up! As much as I dread the exams and essays, I miss my Brandeis campus and cannot wait to be back there in the fall.

 

Week One, Company One

I’ve been with Company One Theatre for exactly two weeks now, and while I know this blog post is supposed to focus specifically on my first week, I just had to wait until after the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of The Americas Conference I attended this past weekend so I could include it in this post (it was, as expected, an incredible experience).

But first things first: the first week. As soon as I started at Company One, I was thrown into the thick of things as I spent my entire first weekend helping organize and run auditions and callbacks for our next season. I’m working mainly with the casting director this summer, and my main projects involve the audition and callback processes for the company. Basically, I do what I did that weekend– help prepare for and organize the actual auditions– and I also work in the office (photo below) to do things like organize resumes and headshots and format audition notices, on this lovely street in Back Bay lined with theaters, jazz clubs, and delicious-smelling restaurants:

BCA
Company One is the resident theater at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA)

So, casting is my main focus. But, I’m also doing general office work and will be helping out with tech week and the performances for our summer show, Astro Boy and the God of Comics, by Natsu Onoda Power. Those duties vary a lot; for instance, I’ve worked on the program for the show, I’ve done inventory and organized the books and plays we’ll be selling in the lobby during the show, and I’ve applied for a liquor license (again, for the company, so we can have a bar at our performances, not for me).

And then, last Wednesday, my supervisor turned to me and asked, “Alison, do you know what dramaturgy is?” To which I embarrassingly said, “Kind of… dramaturgs do, like, research… right?”

“… Why don’t you go to this dramaturgy conference this weekend?”

And I did, I went to the LMDA annual conference in Boston. Not only did I learn a huge amount about dramaturgy and theater, but by the end of the conference I realized how much more I have to learn. Dramaturgs do do research, by the way, so I wasn’t technically wrong in my hesitant answer, but they do so much more and their duties vary so widely. From providing actors and directors and designers with the information they need to accurately and truthfully present a play, to helping plan a season for a theater company, to reaching out to communities and connecting the audience to the performances, to setting up interactional lobbies during shows– and so much more– dramaturgy is an under-discussed, under-appreciated, and incredibly useful job in the theater industry.

I got to go to a variety of talks, such as  “hot topics in dramaturgy” (which included philosophical dramaturgy, post-memory dramaturgy, living as an artist, and a poetic response of what it means to be a dramaturg), a panel on the relationship between dramaturgy and academia, a key-note speech given by Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris (photo below), a networking panel, a panel on the future of theater, and a talk on dramaturgy and diversity. I was especially thrilled that I got to go to the dramaturgy and diversity talk and discuss how to make the theater more diverse in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ability, because we, the theater world, are so far from being accurately representative of our actual population right now.

photo 2
Wesley Morris as the keynote speaker at the 2014 LMDA Conference

And that’s also one of the reasons I wanted to work at Company One this summer; the theater works to produce diverse plays that represent our population and increase accessibility to theater– and having theaters with goals like that (as, honestly, all theaters should have), are so important.

I’m so glad I was able to use my Brandeis connections and find out about the internship at Company One (I contacted an alumna who had interned there before e-mailing in my resume and cover letter), and I can’t wait to see how much more I learn about professional theater, non-profit theater, diversity, art, and the business of theater in the next eight weeks at this company.

Alison Thvedt, 2015