Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Landing a Summerstock Job
ControlBooth: Many young adults choose to spend their summers sleeping and cruising the Internet high way. Others slave away, returning shopping carts to the front of their local Walmart. And still others prefer to live their summer as a cliche, relaxing by their pool and working on their tan. But not you. You've got grander things in mind. You want to expand your career and life experience by working for a summer stock theatre. Awesome. Good for you. Ahead of you is a great opportunity to learn theatre in a professional environment away from your profesors and instructors. It will help you build your resume' and give you a leg up on the competition when you leave school.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
This article is generally helpful. I think it might be more helpful for someone who has never been introduced to the idea of getting a summer stock job, but good to read nevertheless. Here, at CMU School of Drama, we are clued into how to prepare a resume, apply to a job, and ultimately find work during the summers and after graduation. I think we are particularly lucky to have this integrated into both our classes and available as an outside resource. Many students do not have this. Either they want a summer job, or are preparing to leave college, but they are largely on their own. Nobody ever taught them, so they have to discover it themselves. I don't think we often consider how lucky we actually are to have what we have, as we are suffering beneath large sums of work this is not always the first thing that comes to mind, but it's true. And deserves to be remembered from time to time, especially on a late night.
I love that this article contains such a comprehensive look at the whole process of getting and surviving a summer stock job! I am currently, as I'm sure many of us are, applying to a ton of places and nervously waiting for someone to get back to me. Anyways, what I really loved in this article were the interview tips! The whole point about interviewing to be someone's coworker is so important! I think it's easy to get nervous and to try to really sell yourself and to stress about not saying a single "wrong" word". But what's really important, as noted in this article, is that you make sure to be yourself and let your interviewer know you are awesome! I try not to be too formal in any situation, really, but I realized that I might need to relax a bit more when it comes to interviews! I will take these tips to heart and hopefully something will work out for the summer!!
This article was very helpful and gave good reminders of how we need to go about getting a job. Summer stock sounds like it is a lot of work with little time off. We are use to that at CMU so we should be able to handle it well. It will be like school without the pressure of passing grades. I think sending our resumes all over the country and waiting for replies will be fun and anxiety provoking. A new experience and new location will be exciting. I will definitely keep this article handy for future reference.
The tip about going to a theaters individual website is really helpful. Especially if you want to be in a specific area or really admire a particular theatre, contacting them directly will likely open up many more opportunities than just searching backstagejobs.
The "multiple options" advice is something I'm struggling with now. It's not a lot of fun to continuously write cover letters and schedule phone interviews, so as soon as I thought I had something solid that I wanted, I stopped looking. So of course that fell through in an unexpected way, and now I have less time than I should have. (There is learning happening here. I'll know this for next year).
I have to say that I have fallen into the sophomore slump of finding a summer job. I feel that as a freshman you are fresh and eager and so it is easier to find a job. And as a junior you are experienced enough to actually find and get a job that you want. But as a sophomore you fall into a weird gray area where nobody really wants you, so you are a back up for a lot of people. We shall see what happens when I hear back from all my internships, but I think a lot of other people fall into this pit given the amount of juniors that worked on the Dark Night last year because other jobs fell threw.
The industry as a whole has lost so many paying positions in summer stock. I was shocked at the salaries that places were trying to pass off on people. Also the number of positions in total has declined drastically in the past couple of years which makes me nervous for the future generations.
Post a Comment