“I got him coffee. He had no idea who I was.”
Thursday, October 02, 2014
1 Way Theater Internships Can Pay Off
“I got him coffee. He had no idea who I was.”
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“I got him coffee. He had no idea who I was.”
11 comments:
I personally think that internships can be extremely valuable depending on the company your working for. People who say that internships are bad or a waste of time need to reconsider in my opinion. I do agree that an unpaid internship where you are not challenged, and work in bad atmosphere is probably not beneficial, but knowing what you are getting into and letting the company know what you want to get out of it can be extremely helpful. This summer I interned at Williamstown Theatre Festival for free, but I learned so much and gained hands on experience you don't get in school. School has a cookie cutter framework were you know the people you work with, but an internship allows you to expand on your knowledge and apply it to an actual situation. I got to work with professional designers and leaders in the industry, while immensely expanding my knowledge of costume design. Although I wasn't paid, I got to experience something special and I have now made so many connections for the future. These are the prime years to be taking advantage of internships while money is not a necessity.
I think that no mater what company is for internship are always extremely valuable. Having worked for some really great companies, and some really not so great companies. I can say having these experiences I feel have allowed to learn through applying what I am learning in my classes to "real world" productions. A lot of the internships I have done have been unpaid. I don't feel like this is a bad thing and should have kept me from doing the internship. I need to make money as much as the next guy. However, working at this level allows me to be much more appreciative and understanding of unpaid interns when I am a real world crew head.
There is something to be learned in every company whether good or bad, yes, however not every experience should be had for nothing. As a young professional I am very careful of who I work for without being paid...or being paid very little. I believe that if you're going to work for free, work for a good company and make sure it's absolutely worth it or else you're allowing yourself to settle and sending the message that you'll work for anyone without needing to be paid. It's not always about the money, it's about the fact that theatre is a small community and if someone knows you worked for that tiny company for free, why would they pay you since their company is better. Make yourself desirable and make it look like you value your efforts enough to be paid, because someone just might believe you.
I think another point in this article to be maid is that we should all be careful not to make the free internship okay when we are not being treated truly as interns, but as employees. This is illegal and we should all make sure we aren't falling for it. Interns learn and work. Employees work and get paid. Differences!
Internships are always a very difficult and dangerous decision. In Zilles' case it obviously paid off, but accepting an internship at any offer just because of this article is very risky. I think one of the main points of this article that it doesn't emphasize as much as it should is that an internship should be a learning experience. If you go somewhere where you aren't going to learn anything then you're just wasting your time. Working for someone on really remedial tasks for free can actually set you back as an artist. I personally feel as though the internship opportunities within theatre could use some serious revamping.
Theatrical internships are a tricky concept because of the rampant misuse of interns. In this case, the author had a wonderful experience that led to her development of herself as an artist even though she wasn't acting. This is great! However, this is not the case in all situations, obviously. Working for free is also a tricky situation. I would argue that you should research the work, the employees, the space, more than if you were accepting a paying job. You need to know what you're getting into.
In whatever work you're doing, it's important to learn from it. Don't discount anything. If the bad things are truly terrible, understand why. If you, as an intern, are being horribly treated (obviously report it) but take that with you. In the future, if you're ever in a position where you're in charge of interns, you'll know how to not suck.
I think everyone else has pretty much already hit the nail on the head here. I do want to add, however, that not all unpaid internships are bad. This past summer I interned for two companies, one that paid me very well and one that didn't pay me at all. Next summer, if I had to choose, I would probably go back to the company that paid me very well, but not just for the money. While I learned a whole lot at both of these places, I felt so much more appreciated at the second (paying internship.) Because of this, there was a very clear, positive relationship between me and the company.
With that said, I still learned a ton from the unpaid internship, and do not regret taking it at all. Before interning with this company, I had never had any sort of internship in the professional world. Basically, this company took me in and took a chance on me. Looking back, they definitely should have been paying me for the work I was putting in. However, I think the experience, knowledge, and connections I walked away with was plenty valuable. It's all about looking at the internship and being honest with yourself about what you will get out of it, whether it includes a paycheck or not.
I've completed internships with a handful of companies now since starting my undergraduate studies and every time it;s time for me leave I find myself wishing that I could stay and just get a little bit more out of that experience. I've been fortunate enough that each of these experiences put me in a position to take away exactly what I was willing to contribute, and often more. I can emphasize enough the importance of making the best of these chances when they're presented to you. I wouldn't be here, or where I am in my career if I hadn't been for the individuals that I worked with and served as mentors for me over the years.
I was worried that this article was gonna be sarcastic and say that there's only one way that these internships pay off, and I was really glad to find that it didn't take that sort of rude tone and that it was actually very pro internship. This summer I had an incredible internship at The Public Theater in New York, and I wish that I could go back. I felt valued, and I really liked the work that I was doing. I didn't feel like a gopher who fetched coffee for higher ups. I got my boss coffee and food a couple of times, and whenever I did he joked about me being an intern, but besides that I was treated like a props artisan. I'm incredibly glad that I got that sort of real world experience, and I made connections there that are gonna last. My bosses were wonderful people and I hope to someday continue to work with some of the people I worked with this summer.
I have very mixed feelings about internships, more specifically theatre internships. My first theatre internship was as a sound intern in the summer after my freshman year of high school and reprised that role at the same professional theater for the next two summers. All three of these internships were paid but not nearly what they should be. None the less I felt like my labor was being exploited. The first summer I was working 12+ hours a day 6 or 7 days a week for $100 a week. The following summers my wages were brought up to $200 a week, a little better but still terrible. Did I learn a lot? Yes, yes I did. Was it worth it? Most likely, it gave me a lot of good experience and seriously built up my portfolio before I even got to college. On the other hand, I was spending my entire summer working for about $0.25 an hour. The following year I mainly did freelance stuff and ended up making just as much that summer as I did working over previous summers. This past summer I didn't apply for any internships. Instead I applied to be a sound technician at a New York based sound company, Eastern Stage Productions and got the job. Here I was paid reasonable wages, worked reasonable hours, and learned more than I did in all of the other summers combined. Hearing that people are spending their summers working for free to do the work that a fully paid employee should be doing is ridiculous to me. I have noticed that most reputable companies that I have looked at pay their interns. For example, Shure boasts competitive salaries in their internship listings. They also provide housing for people who do not live in the area of their Illinois headquarters. I think that before taking an unpaid internship people should really look to see if what they are getting out of it outweighs the loss that they may be incurring.
I understand that I seem to be coming off really negatively about internships and perhaps that is due to the negative experiences that I have experienced in my internships and the ones that I have heard about. Honestly, I think that the internship system has many positive qualities and helps make great connections that otherwise may not be made in a "real world" situation however I think that people are often to quick to take them when other possibly greater opportunities may be available.
Of course internships are valuable! Not only do they provide you with connections, they also demand that you keep your game up and work hard in order to keep those connections positive ones. They (both the good and the bad, paid and unpaid) allow you to experience the industry in a way that you otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to experience it, and they also teach you about how you work as a professional- how you manage you time, how you do and don't want to be treated, the kinds of personalities you do and don't mesh with, and all the things that you wouldn't be able to learn in a classroom or school setting. It also allows you to make your experience as fruitful as you want it to be, allowing you to actively seek information about the industry, your place in it, what it takes to be a part of it, and assessing for yourself how much you want to learn in order to advance in your career.
I think that there is always a valuable lesson in an internship whether you get to be an integral part of the creative process or not. You get the chance to watch others who have been successful in the field you want to pursue or elsewhere and see how they handle themselves in their professional environment. Observing is one of the best tools we have in absorbing information about a culture and being able to observe a professional environment up close is an invaluable experience. Plus if the professionals in that environment are open to it you may also get the opportunity to ask questions about certain process you don't understand or would have done differently.
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