Internship in the Northwoods!!!

Hello All! I figured it was about time that I wrote something here about my internship experience with Northern Lights Playhouse in Hazelhurst, WI. I was contracted to act in four shows for their rolling repertory summer season, and one show at the open of their fall season. It has been a tremendous learning experience being here!

My contract required me to be off book for all five shows upon my arrival here on May 21, which became a clear neccessity when we opened our first show, the Secret Garden, five days later! But, in addition to just staging the actors in the show, those five days were also dedicated to building the set and costuming the show! The downside of this is that there is no tech crew here. The actors (there are 8 of us, plus one technical director, and a stage manager) are responsible for ALL aspects of putting up the shows. Within our first 12 days here we had opened two shows, built the sets for three shows, and costumed five shows. All this was possible due to the many many long hours spent at the theatre. A minimum of 9 am to 11 pm each day, seven days a week. This was the norm for the first six weeks of my time here. We were given ONE day off in that time. Since those first six weeks, we have still stayed busy, doing at least one (sometimes two) shows every day.

I should also mention that in addition to not having a tech crew, we also do not have a fly system, a budget (I won't go into specifics, but think less than three digits alotted per show), a sound board (well, we had one for the first two months, but then it broke), or any form of heat (the average temp those first few weeks was 55 degrees). They have provided us with housing, which includes one shower for 8 people, and approximately 5 minutes worth of hot water per day. :) Our company catch phrase? -"Not in the budget"

So, now that I've given you all the doom and gloom for the season I should mention some of the great aspects of this place! Like I said, in addition to acting in 5 shows I now have hands-on experience in set construction, costuming, box-office management/ticket sales, and children's theatre. The other company members are truly wonderful people! Most of them are fairly recent college grads, and two are still in school. And, we are local celebrities! Well, celebrities may be an overstatement, but the townspeople sure like to talk about us!

One of the most interesting and fun things I did this summer was volunteer to be the coordinator for the theatre's "Aurora Borealis Children's Theatre Camp". As coordinator I created different units of study for the campers and then delegated the other actors to teach the units based on their strengths. For example, one of the actors has focused most of her career on movement-based physical theatre, so she taught a unit on character movement and stage combat. The major units were: musical theatre, stage combat, dance, improv, and voice/speech. We also did smaller units on light/sound design, costumes, and stage make-up. In addition to overseeing the units I came up with crafts for the children including making paper plate masks, and creating "gobo's" with flashlights, colored tissue paper, and posterboard. The kids came for three hours a day for two weeks, and at the end of the two weeks we had a showcase for their family and friends to show what they had learned! It was a great learning experience for everyone involved!

Currently, we are closing our rotating repertory season next week, and will open the fall season with "Getting Mama Married" on August 18th. I am in rehearsals for that show, and will have fulfilled my contract on August 30 after running "Getting Mama Married" for two weeks.

So that is just a brief overview of the things I've been doing this summer! I have included the link to our show schedule to give you all a better idea of what the "rotating repertory" schedule is like. Not listed on the schedule is a boat show that we have done every Friday this summer. I will be sure to post more details about individual shows/experiences as I have more time to reflect on them in this last month! Also, we should be getting production photos posted so I can share those too!

Here's the link to the show schedule!
http://nl-playhouse.com/Northern_Lights_Playhouse/Current_Schedule.html