Author Topic: Broadway Internship?  (Read 7600 times)

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KWhitney

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Broadway Internship?
« on: Apr 25, 2010, 12:53 am »
Hello all,

I am a student at NYU and therefore will be living in New York during the year and am wondering if there is any way to get an long-term internship with the SM team of a Broadway show?  I learned about shadowing through this website, and took advantage of it and it was such a wonderful experience that I would love to be able too see a show being executed for more than just a single performance.

Any tips?
Thank you.

nmno

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Re: Broadway Internship?
« Reply #1 on: Apr 25, 2010, 03:24 am »
Hello all,

I am a student at NYU and therefore will be living in New York during the year and am wondering if there is any way to get an long-term internship with the SM team of a Broadway show?  I learned about shadowing through this website, and took advantage of it and it was such a wonderful experience that I would love to be able too see a show being executed for more than just a single performance.

Any tips?
Thank you.

Broadway shows usually have Production Assistants during the rehearsal and tech period but not beyond that.   The hours are long (PA's are required to be at all rehearsals as a part of the SM team so you'd be there from say, 8am-7pm, assuming they don't need you longer) and the pay is low (about unemployment weekly max).  However, PA jobs are pretty competitive - many PA's are actually AEA SM's trying to get their foot in the door - often shows will want to hire PA's that can later be subs, which means they need to be AEA. 

Usually a shows insurance can accommodate a person sitting in for a day, but staying longer than that can become more expensive than is beneficial to the show. (ie. you'd think you could tell a show you could come in and work for free, but free is not free - they still have to pay workers comp insurance on you in the event you get hurt on the job and often that isn't worth the money for them).

threeholePUNCH

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Re: Broadway Internship?
« Reply #2 on: Apr 25, 2010, 11:15 pm »
Hey Katie,

What nmno said is true. But a few shows offer an internship program of sorts. Wicked offers internships; although I'm not sure how you would apply for that. This guy http://stephenkgardner.blogspot.com/ wrote on his blog about it, so if you're really interested, I'd try to get in touch with him. Also when I was shadowing at Lion King, the stage manager I was with for the day said that they were looking into developing an intern program but it hadn't gotten off the ground.

Not a lot out there, but there's at least a few.
Anna

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Re: Broadway Internship?
« Reply #3 on: Sep 10, 2011, 01:58 am »
Has anyone received any additional information in regards to the "Wicked" internship? Would it be wrong to contact to the SM staff via mail asking about it?
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Samazon

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Re: Broadway Internship?
« Reply #4 on: Sep 11, 2011, 12:23 am »
One of the recent graduates from my program got an internship with Wicked not too long ago. I don't know how she got it but it seems a little bit different than the guy above's experience. My friend claims to be on the internship until January yet she's been actively working on several other projects since the internship started.
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