Student Blog: What My Internship Taught Me About My Love for Theatre

When I was deciding where to go to college all those many years ago, I didn't decide to study theatre because I thought I was going to be a Broadway Star. I did it because I knew I could get into a good school with a good arts scholarship and be successful. Once I told myself that truth, I quickly became disenchanted with performing. [DISCLAIMER: THAT'S FINE. You don't have to learn to love one thing in college and stick with it, or the performing arts for that matter. The goal of receiving an education and gaining work experience should be make strides in learning, not to make money.] As I pivoted my interests to things behind the scenes, I decided to look at some arts management and administration courses to round out my Theatre degree. I was paying for 20 credit hours, after all. One of the components that goes into the Arts Administration degree is taking a 3- or 6-credit hour internship. As a second semester senior, I decided it was time to get it over with ?

If you want to look at it from an objective standpoint, an excerpt from my generic cover letter will tell you exactly what I did in my administrative internship: "I conducted my internship at Butler Arts & Events Center on Butler University's campus. I worked with Director of Engagement Joanna Hodges in the creation of digital marketing across several web platforms, social media, and Ticketmaster. We have developed a brand for virtual content known as The Fly Rail and are coming together as a team to find innovative ways to market and measure the success of this new platform. In addition, I worked with Programming Manager Kelsey Dunn in developing and updating the Clowes Education Matinee Series for virtual presentations, as well as preparations for an in-person season in 2022. I am currently in the process of finalizing my portfolio containing booking and marketing assets that I have created over the last semester for student, faculty, and professional music performance recitals." (You can check out everything I accomplished and more at butlerartscenter.org)

If you managed to make sense of all that industry lingo, congrats! Not many artists and performers actually can, and I learned that very quickly while working in the office. What my cover letter essentially says is that it is my job to select appropriate performances for audiences and find exciting ways to market those performances to the community. As you can image, this was certainly a different take on the arts than I had been exposed to before. Thankfully, the learning curve was not steep, because I quickly fell in love with engaging the community and bringing innovate and enjoyable performances to Indianapolis. My last day is actually the day this blog is going to be published, and I wish for all the world that I could stay and do more of what I'm learning to love.

With two weeks until graduation and the completion of my internship, I finally know why I came to study theatre at Butler and studied it the way that I did. When I start working in the industry, I don't want to be famous. Instead, I want my career to be a large contribution to the work that brings a piece of theatre to fame. I want a select few people to know how much I put into a production and give real thanks for the work I did. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy performing and hope to continue to audition for things. I'm just not the kind of person that can continue to put my whole heart on the line every time I audition for something. Instead, why not take the road less traveled and help other artists and patrons enjoy the art others passionately create.

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