The Des Moines Playhouse: An Old Place, New Role

This summer I am interning at The Des Moines Playhouse in the education department. It is great to be back at this theatre as an intern, especially since I spent three summers in high school volunteering for their Pre-Intern Program (PIP). I get to spend the summer helping teachers instruct a variety of different children's theatre camps with ages varying from pre-K all the way to Freshman in high school. The program has expanded quite a bit and we get to work with a lot of new spaces this summer which were made available because the Playhouse recently finished stage one of their 3-phase renovation project. These past two days have been interesting because I've been busy at work, yet many of you may have noticed that public school haven't let out yet. Well, as a PIP I never realized how much preparation the interns must do the first two weeks before classes start up. Yesterday was great because Kathy, the Education Director, sent us off for the morning on a "get to know you" trip. It was not until hours later that I realized how useful it was that she had done that because that afternoon I found myself trying to hash out the entire summer schedule with the other interns. Remembering how collaborative work at the Playhouse is between interns, I found myself admiring Kathy's decision to send us off on team building exercises for our first morning of work. I'm not sure the work over these past days would have gotten done as quickly if we had not all already become familiar with each other in a more social setting first. Kathy certainly opened the door for the interns to become friends as well as co-workers from day one and that is a valuable management decision I will not soon forget. I look forward to informing you of my adventures this coming summer, especially after all the preparation and cleaning is done.