Author Topic: ARTICLE: Confessions of a Serial Intern  (Read 3567 times)

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Aerial

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MatthewShiner

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Re: ARTICLE: Confessions of a Serial Intern
« Reply #1 on: Dec 23, 2011, 05:12 pm »
There is a time and place to intern.

The fact of the matter is interns will always continue to be used as long as there is a large supply of people willing to intern. 

If people put a value on their work, and refused to intern, or, for the matter, PA underneath a living wage, then employers would need to adjust their pay-rate, learn to do without the interns, or figure out another way to do business.

But, yes - it does irk me on shows i do where we spend more on consumables nightly for a show then the intern makes in a day.



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Anything posted here as in my own personal opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer - whomever they be at a given moment in time.

Joshua S.

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Re: ARTICLE: Confessions of a Serial Intern
« Reply #2 on: Dec 23, 2011, 07:17 pm »
I once SM'd a show for a VERY small stipend (I had my reasons for doing it), and during a production meeting found out that they were spending about 4 times my stipend on a wig.  I almost cried.  Ok, I'll admit it... I did cry a little later.  It hurt to feel so devalued.  The worst part in my opinion was that the wig looked an awful lot like the actresses natural hair.

megf

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Re: ARTICLE: Confessions of a Serial Intern
« Reply #3 on: Dec 23, 2011, 07:33 pm »
Matthew - I'm in your camp here, I think, unless I've misinterpreted your response... The economics of labor in this business are TOUGH. And change, all too often, happens slowly, from the bottom up.

That said, I'm astonished: seven internships is a lot of work. While I'm happy to have done intern/apprentice jobs before, during and briefly after college, I question the habits of people who are truly serial interns. Even if we set aside the issue of working well below a living wage, these are still entry-level positions. Most arts internships, as advertised, run between two and ten months. Taking the average of that, should we expect that any early-career worker needs to spend between five and six years honing their craft for minimal pay? This is further complicated by the reality that a college degree is no longer special qualification, and recent grads often seek internships as a way to transition into the professional world. Four years (or so) of schooling at the college level, followed by five or six years of entry level work, sounds extraordinarily inefficient to me.

Perhaps I'm drawing a line in the sand... but it seems foolhardy, after the third or fourth such experience, to imagine that an internship will lead to employment. Applications for other jobs - with the same organization(s) an individual has interned, with different ones, with any companies at all - lead to paying work, higher on the totem pole.

missliz

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Re: ARTICLE: Confessions of a Serial Intern
« Reply #4 on: Dec 23, 2011, 08:20 pm »
I interned once and it was an invaluable experience, especially as someone whose SM experience before that was limited to 1 undergrad course and being self-taught. Roughly halfway through the season, one of the ASMs left, and I was put into his track...and discovered we had been doing nearly the exact same job, though he was paid considerably more. (I never got the pay increase, which is another story.) I know luck was a lot of the reason I got the job, but the similarity between being the intern and being the ASM bothered me so much I decided never to intern again.

One or two internships I can totally understand, especially if you're still learning, but seven makes me wonder what she was getting out of it, if not money or job connections.
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least. -Ionesco

Rebbe

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Re: ARTICLE: Confessions of a Serial Intern
« Reply #5 on: Dec 25, 2011, 08:46 am »
I never had a theater internship, but have interned in other areas, for academic credit.  I remember being shocked, when I got involved with professional theater, to learn that internships were not restricted to students.  I wonder if going back to that idea that an unpaid internship must be linked to a school, so something is begin given in return for labor, would be useful in reducing exploitation.  If you wanted to gain post-college, un-paid experience, you could do so as a volunteer.  This may seem like just nomenclature, but some companies value and respect their volunteers more than their interns, and it could be valuable to adjust the expectations on both sides.

I agree that “just say no” to what equates to work without compensation would be one way to eliminate this problem, but I think the target audience for internships is getting too many mixed messages to do that.  It’s taken the “serial intern” seven chances with it to begin questioning the system, and many of us here speak from the experience of seeing numerous interns in action.  I did wonder reading the post what part of theater she is an intern for, since some interns get more credit and job connections than others.
"...allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster."  (Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare In Love)

 

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