First Days of Interning

Thursday (Day 74) "Work" and Show Number Eight!

Week one of my internship with Camden People's Theatre began slowly enough - reading policy and procedure statements, signing waivers, taking a tour of the building, but the pace picked up quickly.

There will be a lot of office management stuff to which to attend weekly: updating the subscribers data base, preparing feedback reports to directors, processing receipts from the current show, managing spreadsheets, preparing bank deposits and related tasks.

The director, Matt, is soooooooo nice. Right off, he has asked me to collect biographical data on potential actors, search the internet for foundations and agencies to which CPT might qualify for funding and take minutes at meetings with applicants for CPT's spring festival of contemporary theatre. The festival, called SPRINT, "provides a showcase platform of major importance for emerging theatre practitioners."

Perhaps CPT's most important contribution to the local theatre scene is TONIC, a scheme for the Training Of New and Innovative Companies. "With the support of Arts Council England, London, CPT now works with up to four emerging companies per year, providing support towards the development of new performance work."

Freya Elliott is the assistant director at CPT. She is interested in creating visuals that combine flim with live performance. Freya is also mixes sculpture, video, paintings, prints and performance pieces. Really neat! She's fun too.

CPT's current production is The Flies by Jean Paul Sartre where "Sartre meets Fight Club! Theatre meets Live Indie Rock Music! It's a play with the Band A Riot in Heaven live on stage. The most famous French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre tells in The Flies “the tragedy of Liberty against that of Fatality.”

CPT's next production, one that I can't wait to see, is A Place at the Table. It's a "bold artistic journey tracing the shockwaves from the 1993 assassination of Burundi’s President Ndadaye backwards through Colonialism to ancient myth and forwards to the Rwandan genocide and conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo."

The really great thing about working here is that already I am getting to see ALL of the theatre business - from the very start of an idea to a satisfied audience filing out the door.

Somebody Has To Do It!

Unbeknownst to me, it's customary in the business for small theatres to schedule an extra matinee performance of a new production just for the "theatre community" - a "private showing" if you will, to solicit feedback and generate "buzz."

This week, The New Wimbledon Theatre issued such an invitation for Holes. It's based on Louis Sachar’s award-winning novel, and follows Disney’s successful film. The London stage premiere at Wimbledon's black box studio is from Director Adam Penford and Designer Simon Kenny.

(Having read the book dozens of times, it was one of my probably my first reading obsessions in elementary school. And even better, I had seen the play produced at the People's Light and Theatre in Malvern just a few years ago.)

So after lunch on Thursday, Matt sent me off to Wimbledon to represent CPT. It was a beautiful spring day. The "assignment" was in a part of London that I had not yet had a chance to explore. Holes is one of my favorite stories. Oh well, somebody has to do it!

Also Today: The Feast of St. Joseph

Happy Feast Day Father Joe!