 I'm originally from Massachusetts, and I went to college in the South generally. So friends on the panel, when we get started, Kylan, give us an intro. Everyone introduce yourself to your theater. And then let's jump into the first questions. Save about... I'll give you a five at the end. We'll take some questions from the audience, or I'll let you know if there's any online. Sound good? 40 minutes, rock and roll, and please make sure you speak into the mic. It'll be great. Yeah, I can pass it down, and then you'll pass it down to me in the mic. Three in three. Back on stage, is it? Oh, no. Give me a rehearsal room. I'm like, give me a rehearsal room for the day. Don't put me on this side. So high tide, yeah. I love theater. I mean, I don't like... Probably my sophomore year of college was like... Yeah, it was like, no more. I could have started as an actor, but I was sick when I was playing a swan. I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was. I thought I was playing a bird, so... I missed it. I don't remember it at first, right? I don't remember. Hello, my name is Kylin Adams, and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Creative Careers panel on how to apply for an internship slash fellowship. I am the education fellow at Berkeley Repertory Theater, and I'm here with some of my peers at other theaters across the Bay Area. So we're just going to go down the line and introduce ourselves and our fellowship internship position at our theaters. I'm Nayila Harper-Milvaux, and I am a fellow at ACT, American Conservatory Theater. My fellowship is the Community Producing Fellow, so I actually work between the artistic and education departments at ACT. I'm Alessandro McLaughlin. I am one of the artistic direction interns at Marine Theater Company, so I work directly with the artistic director. My name is Leigh Lawni-Germanuda. I'm the education fellow at the American Conservatory. I'm Mara Ishihara-Zinke, and I'm the props fellow at Berkeley Rep. I'm Karina Fox. I'm the artistic direction apprentice at Magic Theater. Great. Now that you told us about your fellowship positions, before we get more into details about what that entails, I want you to tell me a little bit about your experience prior to applying for the fellowship, apprenticeship, internship. Great. So let's see. Yeah, I had a lot of experience interning at theaters. So after I graduated, which was about a year and a half ago, I was in New York for a year, and I was one of the artistic interns for Signature Theater. I had previously done an internship at Studio Theater, an internship at Creative Artist Agency, so I was just doing a lot of internships, honestly. And so I was looking for something that was a little bit of a step above or something that was a longer period of time where I could really sink my teeth into an organization and also a position that could really teach me a whole lot about what it's like to be in nonprofit theater. And so that's sort of why I came to ACT and applied for the nine-month fellowship. I also was, like, in New York for a year after a little bit, like, not knowing what I wanted to do. You know, I was in a city right after I graduated, and I knew that I really loved and was passionate about theater, but I also, like, had to pay bills, and so I took so many different jobs. I worked at a barber shop. I worked at, like, a customer experience associate at a startup, so it was, you know, I was just doing a whole lot of random stuff on top of my theater passions, and I think that, you know, led me to want to pursue something that was a little bit more stable for nine months. So I graduated college in May, and prior to that had been focusing more on direction and being a director, and I was talking to my mentor, and he was, he had been an artistic director, and he was, like, I think, you know, I think he got the chops for it, kid. So I started to focus in on that and looked for a bunch of internships that are all out there, but I was really attracted to the Bay because there are a lot of theaters here. And what brought me to MTC was the idea of specifically focusing on artistic direction and being in the North Bay in a different area, so it's not directly in the city, but being able to have that sort of one-on-one relationship with my boss is really great, and that was what kind of pulled me in. So yeah, prior to that, I was looking for something like that, and that was what brought me to MTC. What was I doing before? I just graduated in June, and prior to being at ACT, I was working actually for the Chrissy Fields Center where I was doing environmental education. It seems like a stretch, but for, and I'll talk a little bit about this more. My background is not in theater, and that'll tie into some of the other things we'll be talking about later in the panel, but my background is actually in education and community organizing, and I, like I said, I'm the Educational Fellow over at ACT, and I'm always looking for opportunities to work with different types of youth and different learning modalities and figuring out how else I can learn about different demographics of youth specifically here in San Francisco. So when I was over at ACT Santa Cruz, I was a community studies major with an education minor, doing student organizing out there and volunteering with different school programs, and my big thing is diversity, equity, and inclusion, and cultural competence in any type of education that I'm doing. So I had met with someone that knew folks over at ACT, and I was just looking for other opportunities to learn about San Francisco kids. I'm from this city. I want to continue working here and eventually go into a public school administration. So I was like, okay, this is really cool. I love theater. I'm a patron of the theater, and I did it as a kid, and I think it would be really awesome to get to incorporate my background in social justice and community organizing and cultural competence into a theater curriculum because I do recognize that theater and other art forms are not something that's always accessible to all types of kids. So I was just looking for other opportunities where I could get different types of learning and different activities out to different types of youth and see what they would be interested in and see how different types of youth receive types of information, whether it's creative or whether it's scientific. Also graduated in June from a theater conservatory program for scenic design, so I was doing nothing but scenic design and working in my school's prop shop, and when I graduated or when I was starting to be about to graduate my boss at the prop shop, encouraged me to apply to fellowships because I was unsure if I wanted to do design stuff or if I wanted to work on the more technical side because I had also been working summers as a carpenter at summer stock theaters and I liked both. I just graduated this May and I had dual degrees in theater and business so I knew that I was really interested in not only learning, I'm a director and I knew I was not only interested in learning about the artistic side of what it means to work in a theater but also the business side. So artistic direction of rentices really appealed to me specifically and two days after graduating I drove to Chicago and I interned at Victory Gardens Theater in casting and producing which I was also very interested in and it was a wonderful experience and I had applied to a couple places it's harder to find artistic direction of rentices or fellowships than you'd think so there weren't that many but I applied to a couple and I grew up in Santa Cruz and I also am a Sam Shepard fan so there was a lot of things about magic that really appealed to me and it just worked out really nicely. So some of you have talked about it and you talked about what you were doing prior to your internship, fellowship or apprenticeship but I'm curious as to why did you say my next step needs to be an apprenticeship, fellowship or internship and why did you decide to pursue a career in the arts? Some people do it more as a hobby a lot of people don't do it as a career in the arts so some of you touched on it but if you want to elaborate, feel free but yeah, why an internship, fellowship or apprenticeship as your next step and why pursue a career in the arts? So one, I guess the reason why I picked a career in the arts was because I was probably about 18 years old and I was like okay you're coming up on going to college what are you going to do? and I had the fortune of going to a performing arts high school so I had been doing theater from the age of 14 to the age of 18 and I was like you're going to keep doing this and you're going to make a career on it and you're going to want it so then that carried into college and as I shifted from being I started out as an actor and as a shift from being an actor to being a director I had the same similar thought of okay, I want to go into the business of theater because I can still do my art I can still direct and I can also you know work on the admin side so that came into what administrative internships can I find? and internship felt like the next logical step because it's really hard not that it can't be done but it's really hard to move to a city and kind of freelance your own work and if you're going to do that you have to be really really into just doing that into okay I'm going to produce my own work I'm going to knock on doors which is great and that was definitely my option B but option A was totally let me get an internship let me find something that is going to creatively drive me for my internship is 10 months for 10 months and give me all the connections and give me all of the opportunities to talk to people and meet people in this area so that I can freelance the next year and do my art and stuff like that so that was why I picked an internship next after Before things specifically why I decided to go into a fellowship internship specifically for the arts before doing anything in theater performing arts has always been a really big part of my life and my extracurricular is growing up and during my last year of college I was actually working with a youth program through the Filipino Migrant Center down at Long Beach and I was helping them produce this showcase called Samasama Samasama and Tagalog means together and what they were doing was creating a show with hip hop music, dance, theater skits and all these different components of performance art to talk about social issues that were important to them in their community being in a very working class neighborhood of Long Beach and they were talking about things like violence they were talking about things like gun accessibility to youth and gangs and there was a lot of really heavy stuff that they were talking about and writing about and singing about that they were conveying with their community members because they invited people from the city they invited people from their schools they invited their peers and I love that any form of performance art can bring that out of people one thing that I really love about theater is empathy when you're doing these activities you're able to empathize and if you sit and watch these pieces it's something that you can convey to a large group of people and you can feel that with an audience and with your fellow performers and actors so I knew that after graduating and doing community organizing of that type I wanted to continue doing something that was very physical that was through performance and so when I graduated and after having that experience and that showcase I was like, okay I'm shopping around I'm looking at all these different fellowships and internships and especially with education you're looking at things like CalTeach and Teach for America but I know that I wanted to do something that was more specific and I also wasn't sure if I wanted to go straight to getting a teaching credential so when I heard about this program I was like, oh, you know what I have a really wide skill set and I wanna hone in on something and see how my skill set can be contributed to something else I'm really confident in the skills that I have I know that I can gain more and I can also learn from different fields so fellowships and internships are a really great opportunity to know your value and know what you can bring but also recognize that all of that can be expanded especially as a recent grad you can expand on the skills that you have and make them even better and you have things to contribute to wherever it is that you're going whatever the fellowship or internship is Right, so there's this saying in the theater that if you can imagine yourself doing anything else, do that other thing and I actually so I heard that from a very early age and I just never really believed in it because for me it's always been I feel like I could be happy doing other things and after I graduated college I always was the type of person to keep my options open but I think what is hard about that is when you always are keeping your options open sometimes you close all of your options just a little bit so I felt like I had done a lot of directing in college like some of the other people up here directing is a passion of mine and I just thought maybe this isn't the right path but I really want to put my full force into it and see if it is and so that's what has really brought me here and also what has brought me to the fellowship really is like having a place where it's a little bit safe and you can feel safe in this organization but you can also there's opportunities to assistant direct there's opportunities to direct there potentially we have this at ACT there's this thing called Sky Festival which what is awesome about ACT is that it's also a school it also has a three year MFA program and so there are tons of young actors who are going to be professionals and I've gotten to know those people I've gotten to direct some of them in the Sky Festival that they do for about three weeks during January so there are tons of opportunities I feel like within all of these theater organizations to really pursue your passions but also in a safe environment so you have a you know, you've got a nine to five-ish job that you can feel safe in but then also pursue your other stuff so that's what I felt like and I'm sort of just you know, I don't know if it's going to be I don't know exactly what's next I know we're going to get to that but I think going full force in one direction and then seeing if it works out or not is a good idea college is such a wonderful time for theater majors because you have this safe environment where you're encouraged to make art you're constantly learning about all these different types of art forms encouraged to experiment with them and you're also surrounded by people who are there and they're so eager to teach you and help you develop as an artist and I know you mentioned a mentor and I had a couple really wonderful mentors that I learned from and they were there through the process of me and then he faced graduation and there's this terrifying idea that I may not be able to direct again for you know, the set period of time for who knows how long and of course that's not the case with everyone and who knows what would have happened but I reached the end of my college experience and I decided that I wasn't done learning in this setting and of course if you go out without something like this you'll continue to learn but I wasn't done learning from a mentor and in this kind of environment and I definitely wasn't ready for grad school I wanted... they want you to have experience I wanted more experience so I thought that an apprenticeship is the perfect opportunity to not only kind of sneak peek into the professional world before I try to dive in independently but also to just continue my education you know they say that you get to a point with the arts where you kind of stop watching and start doing and I'm sure that is true but for me at this point in my life I decided that and you do participate but it's a lot about watching people who have given their blood, sweat and tears to be where they are now and I find that invaluable so I decided that that's what I wanted to dedicate my year to just continue to learn from these people so for me pursuing a creative career was never not an option it's the only thing I've ever wanted to do and I went to such a specific college that I really can't do anything else at this point so like fingers crossed this works out so when I was done with college I had been taking so many classes just about scenic design and I had been working in the prep shop and I knew like I said that I kind of wanted to do either or but I wasn't sure which but I wasn't confident enough in my skills with construction or any of the like stuff that goes into working over hire as a props person to want to apply to a like an over hire position turn up the first day on the shop and be like grossly under qualified and I was talking to my boss about it in college and she said that like fellowships and apprenticeships would give me a good sort of learning within a safety net where I would still be like trusted to do stuff but I would have mentorship or I would be able to check in more often about like is this the right thing to do and have like be a part of an organization but not seriously I guess and also the like I grew up in Boston and I went to school in Chicago and the opportunity to just sort of be able to move to a city like I applied mostly to the East Coast in cities I had never been to before and then here and knowing that I would have like a place to live and like sort of a built-in social structure was really comforting Thank you Mara Alright so now you all have made the decisions I'm going to apply for fellowship, apprenticeship, internship tell us about what the application process was like as well as the interview process because we have or featuring a lot of different individuals from different companies and institutions tell us about what that may have been different from the other opportunities that you were applying for and also what tools did you need to have when applying for example I'm the education fellow at Berkeley Rep but when I was applying in my interview process I had to talk about a lesson plan that I would do for the upcoming season so talk a little bit about those type of things So specifically for MTC we had to send in the cover letter and resume as usual and what was unique about the interview process was I'm originally from the East Coast as well so I was not here so I had to do mine over the phone which was fine but what was really great about interviewing with Jason my boss was he so he called me and it was a regular interview but his questions I think my favorite question he asked me was you have an unlimited amount of resources you have to produce one playwright why would you produce this playwright and there was this weird long silence because I was like oh god what's my answer going to be but it was good because it felt like he was asking me questions that were about me as an artist not stereotypical internee questions or where do you see yourself in five years which is a great question but it was nice to have a question that was about my art and like why I would pick a specific playwright and things like that especially because MTC is we do a lot of new American plays so it was cool to kind of be like what playwright would you bring into this company if you could so that was really cool and I think yeah you just you can endlessly and endlessly prep the questions that you're going to get asked at interviews but my biggest advice on that is just show yourself seriously just be yourself that was like my whole thing with interviews the few interviews I did I just made sure that they knew who I was as an artist and who I was as a person because most of the companies and I'm sure everyone can speak on this care about the people that they're getting as a person they want to know what you're like as an artist what you do for fun what movies you like it's easy to include little tidbits of that in your cover letter so yeah just show yourself be true to yourself I kind of went off weird random brand no yeah I think that's really important because so my fellowship the community producing fellowship did not exist before I applied so I actually applied to both the artistic fellowship and the education fellowship and I would say you know the reason why this came about was because they liked me as a person and they saw that my skills were in both artistic stuff and then also the education piece of it as well and I think that they were also in a point in their organizational structure where they wanted someone who could do both and could be sort of a liaison and could help with producing community engagement events could also assistant direct could also teach and so it was a perfect mix where I feel like and this is sort of a pilot program right so like I'm piloting the community producing fellowship but for me you know that was really important was to show myself was to know what I was passionate about was to know like what my skills were and be really clear about those I think we also as the education specific in the education department specifically had to like put forth a lesson plan as well just like a little tidbit it was really important for me to know who I was and to show that so that they could like who I was and then be like oh well this may be a good fit for her and even if we don't have it like maybe we can make it which is pretty cool so looking looking at different applications and like shopping around for different opportunities to learn about students which is mainly what I was doing I wasn't just straight up looking for applications and that wasn't my process it was where are there people in San Francisco in education that I want to learn from and how can I get in contact with them and how can I talk to them about what they did to get where they are when I found my application for ACT it was the day that it was due and I didn't know that they had a fellowship and it was really funny because I was just meeting with our associate director of education and community programs correct that's Jasmine's title associate director yeah so I was meeting with her because she was a friend of a friend and I wanted to talk to her about her community organizing work and her work with education within the theater because again my main thing is learning about youth from San Francisco like if I'm going to go into public public education administration then I need to know the kids that I'm working for because I'm not going to put students like lives and experiences in my hands I don't know what they're going through and what that education system is going through so I wanted to talk to her about that because she'd been in education for a really long time and I'd been talking to other people about their experiences in education which I think is really key when you're shopping for like what you want to do and you're applying for all these different things is also talk to the people that have been in those positions and then you'll find the applications and then they'll open doors for you because you're networking through community building and it's not just your personal benefit like hey what applications do you have for me it's how did you get where you are and how can I learn from you and then also maybe what tools do you have for me what opportunities do you have for me so like that was my process in looking for the application I filled it out that night and luckily I've had almost a decade within peer education and teaching that I came up with a lesson plan that night and wrote my cover letter and a good tool or a good tip to have is know who your audience is but again also know who you are because you can also frame everything that you value everything that you're passionate about and also say that in a way that might speak to whomever you're applying for or applying to for places but the like thing that started me on the like apprenticeship route was my boss told me about an opportunity in Greensboro and I was like I'll apply but I don't want to go to the south so I went onto the spam the Society of Props Masters Artisans some acronym but it's spam website and they have like an Excel sheet that just has like every single Props Master in the country put up their own theater and like if they have an education opportunity or like an internship or apprenticeship if it's paid, if they have housing so I just went through the spreadsheet and was like oh I'd go to Philadelphia and I like sent in my application to Walnut Street and then after like a whole process of that and sort of during the interview process writing everything down and like sort of getting better at every interview as I went along and like realizing the sort of questions that I wanted to ask about the way that the shop worked, if we had to work run crew and stuff I sort of thought that I was going to go to one theater and then my boss like as I was leaving on a Friday night it was like oh Berkeley reps said that they're still looking for someone and I was like I didn't even consider in California I sent in my application that Saturday I got an interview on Wednesday and I think I got it the next Friday so it was a really fast turnaround because I think I applied really late and it just felt really right and I was also really lucky because my school had a class that you're required to take the last quarter of your second quarter of your senior year that was like making resumes, learning how to do cover letters and making a website specifically for designers and so I had all of my application material kind of already in send out to people and in my interview I like sent in I think the Berkeley rep requires you to like make a separate portfolio in a like PowerPoint but I also sent my website and in the interview like the Props Master here was going through my website like asking me about all the separate projects the classic interview questions like when's the time that you like struggled or failed and how did you so it was I think it was pretty standard I of course can't speak for everyone but I think the idea of a cover letter for an artist is kind of horrifying it's just like we have a page or less to put your artistic soul on the paper in a way that people will be able to understand in a way too it was actually a real hang up for me and I really enjoy writing too so I was just staring at this paper and I had a my mentor told me to pick something in a work that I had done that makes me proud, that brings me joy but I think not sums me up as an artist because that's impossible but something that I feel really speaks to myself as an artist and put that down and use that as a point to expand personally really helpful and I also found that that was a way that I was able to be truthful about myself and it actually wasn't a very conventional cover letter you can look up the way cover letters should go and that's extremely useful but I kind of deviated from that and I found that I attracted places very specific places that could relate to my cover letter and maybe it wasn't the cover letter for everyone to work for myself and my roommate was also a director so he had a list I had a list and we worked off each other and I believe magic I believe required a writing sample, a cover letter and a resume when you hear back when I heard back from them they gave me a list of probably 15 questions and the first play of their season they said read this, answer these questions sending me another play and giving me a prompt and having me write a response to it and it was pretty nerve wracking but honestly once the interview started it was such a joy to talk to people who love theater as much as I do and to really be able to discuss a play like this in depth and it was a beautiful play and an interesting one and it felt like almost like they were trusting me with something and the conversation was easy and fun and I really enjoyed the whole process honestly thank you Karina you actually put up a great point about when you're doing cover letters and you're as an artist what do we put in there to talk about our trajectory as an artist also what we've done thus far and so just hearing from about two of you I'm just curious for our applicants out there who are about to look over those resumes look over those cover letters what would be your tips to getting their resumes and cover letters seen and if I care about two or three of you and I know we have multiple disciplines here so if one person meets a discipline that speaks that grade I just have something really quick you mentioned how important it is that they know who you are but I think it's also equally important that you know who they are so making for interviews too so making sure you've done the research on who the artistic director is, the plays they're doing that season and showing in your material that you have done that work I think is very important yeah totally to go off of that because that's an excellent point you definitely need to know the theaters you're sending these to you can have a structure to your cover letter it's very easy it's not necessarily writing a new cover letter every single time but it's finding the one unique thing one or two unique things about the company that you really like so like with MTC we do mostly new American plays so I had to kind of talk about that in my cover letter just keep your structure very easy to read, think about it in the sense of when you go into, if you are an actor or if you're a director when someone comes into your audition room or you go into an audition room they're flipping it to look at it very quickly if there's something on it that catches their eye or the structure is really simple to read that's going to get you so many people are going to compliment you on that because that's just such a big deal that it shows that you have structure it shows that you know okay here's a list of the things I've done here's the sub sections of each thing just keep it super simple don't get overly complicated with your resume unless you're I can't speak on designers but I know designers it's a different thing but yeah the simpler the better and I would agree know the companies you're applying for because they'll be able to sniff out which ones are like okay this is a cover letter they sent to everyone it shows that you care so that's what I would say for design cover letters and resumes do a really quick google like most designers have their resume on their website and you can just copy their format because it's kind of funny and some people do different things depending on if they're more design or more technical but for design and production it's sort of your portfolio, your resume your cover letter together are showing what you're doing and in the like skills section on my resume I have stuff that isn't demonstrated in my portfolio at all but I definitely can do it like lathe because I just don't have pictures of the stuff that I have turned but making sure that they know like just having that is like nice in it or like upholstery like writing it down even though I have upholstery like stuff in my resume making sure that it's like driving the point home of everything the cover letter is more where your personality comes out or like being able to work on a team is really important when you're working backstage and no one wants to hire someone who they think is going to like personally so just like the skills but you're also like a good person to work with for me being really honest about like who I was as an artist was really important in my cover letter and also like what makes me tick and what kind of theater I want to direct and make so for instance like I was really upfront about being you know a queer woman of color and that was really important I was also very upfront about you know I what's really important to me about theater is that it's sort of this creative collaborative imagination space in which we can all sort of rethink narratives that we've been potentially taught and really you know it provides a lot of an area to really grow and rethink our world and so you know I was in American Studies and Theater Studies double major and and I'm always really interested in the intersection between race and politics and theater and how we can rethink a lot of what we've been taught and I think putting that into my cover letter and like saying this is what makes me tick and this is the type of theater and the type of art that I want to make and this is why was really important to just being honest about who I was and I think it also it's important to know that like that might just sort of as you said it might not be right for everyone for every theater right that might turn some people off you know so we're both doing a sort of we're both you know limiting ourselves you know but we're both choosing to do that because I don't want to be in a theater that doesn't respect that and doesn't really want me to be there and want the art that I want to create so part of these programs that is adding to our resume and so we've roughly been depending in our apprenticeships, internships, fellowships for about six months so thus far what has been the most exciting experience you've had and a method is to Karina first and then we're going to go down the line so magic works on pretty much exclusively new plays and that means that the playwright is in the room for at least part of the experience and I had never experienced that so it's been our first show this season the Eva Trilogy the playwright Barbara Hammond was the most wonderful person I've ever met was there for pretty much the entire process so watching her and the director and artistic director of the company Loretta Greco work together was amazing and I've never experienced that and seeing how a new play is built and how it changes throughout the process was pretty phenomenal Graham has like a really really exciting stuff happening in our season like I started halfway through and I like immediately got to start working on really like cool props and like it was just really pretty and now I've like sort of been abilities in the shop so I've been like interested with a couple projects that I've workshopped with the actors and the special effects coordinator to just fully making them stage the most exciting part for me so far in doing education fellowship is seeing the process that students take when they begin a class and then when they end it and they do their exhibition or they do their final show because I'm really working with kids that unless they've repeated a program that we've done before don't have any background in theater or acting or being in front of people period probably don't like speaking in front of people at all and I remember there's this one kid who's like I'm not going up I'm not reading lines, I'm not doing this activity I don't like it, I don't want the attention I'm going to sit in the corner, do your thing I was like okay that's not going to happen and you're going to enjoy it so I'm going to work with you all semester and see where that goes and this kid was like the star of one of our programs at the end of the semester he was like you told me you didn't want to do it and you just did it and you had a standing ovation and a process and seeing them grow and seeing them become proud of themselves because they're standing on a stage or they're standing in front of an audience and they're putting themselves out there and a lot of the stuff that we cover it's like not it's not the lightest stuff it's not always comedy the show that I did with Dan Han High School they're they talk about things like bullying they took inspiration from sexual assault cases and they wrote about that they put that out on stage and they gave it to an audience and they were like oh I can do that I can tell people how I feel about what's going on in the world and people either they like it or they don't but I can do that and seeing a student be like wow this is something that I would want to do and even if I did not have that opportunity it's a really beautiful thing to see with young people so similar to magic we do a lot of new plays to hear playwrights' thoughts and talk with playwrights and stuff has been really really cool and really eye-opening because I didn't work on a lot of new plays in college so this is it was like a new sort of new field for me which is awesome but something really small that's really cool that we get to do is a lot of it for our out-of-town artists we'll do airport pickups and some of the interns will go and do them so you're sitting in a car with an out-of-town artist designer or the directors or sometimes actors and just getting to know them and really hearing their stories seeing where you connect and then they're in the building for the next 3-4 weeks and the actors sometimes longer so you're becoming colleagues with these artists and it's really great so that's been the thing that's really been awesome for me is just the relationships with other artists I'm cultivating just by getting to know them as talking to them about their coffee to them they'll ask me my opinion on art and I'm like oh my god you work in New York and you want to talk to me about my opinions like that's really cool so stuff like that those cultivated relationships are really really awesome there's been some really exciting stuff I think I mentioned this earlier but I was able to direct some of the MFA's because I got to know them through another show that we worked on and I got to work on Sunset Baby by Dominique Moreau who is one of my favorite playwrights so that was really really exciting it was sort of a crazy 2-week rehearsal process that was then we put together these performances in the studios that was definitely one of the most exciting things and then also something that we just did in the education department which was also through the artistic department every 28 hours Black Arts Festival which we just did 2 weeks ago and that was just one of the most exciting and brilliant and empowering moments of my fellowship so far because I was able to help to produce that event and Leilani was also helping and you know the Strand Theater there was never that sort of like take over with people of color in that space I think Leilani has talked about this I find it really difficult because theater can be a very privileged space and can seem like it's only for a certain type of person and so I think really seeing us tackle issues of police brutality in that space and was really empowering and felt like a moment a pivotal moment in my fellowship cool so you will talk about some amazing opportunities that you have had have been granted the opportunity to partake on which is pretty cool especially when you're talking about these apprenticeships internships and fellowships so my last question for you all is really about all that you've learned thus far and you have about maybe four to five more months to go what are your next steps what are you thinking about what has these kind of a two part question so one part of the question is what are your next steps and the other part of the question is what has your fellowship, internship, apprenticeship taught you thus far about yourself as an artist, as an administrator, as a director as a designer and has that made you change what your next steps were going to be prior to coming into the fellowship or the internship or apprenticeship so anyone who would like to take that can my next steps are definitely continuing to be in places where I can build relationships with students I think the biggest way to to really get through to them and to really effectively teach them is to have a long term relationship one thing that's been hard is that for some of the residencies that I'm teaching right now is that it's once a week for like an hour you can really only build so much of a meaningful relationship when you only see them that often and then you tie in holidays and breaks for schools and I see them even less than that within a semester so tying into what I've learned from learned from my fellowship so far as much as I love teaching these different programs like I would want to do something that's long term so I'm looking into other like long term teaching opportunities to be more consistent with students I have the opportunity this semester to be at IW Wells high school and I'm with them every day and that's it's been a joy for me because I'm seeing them grow more consistently rather than just like once a week and another thing is that I'm also recognizing that I am not the most comfortable working in such a large organization and I've just taken that away because it's I've taken that away from this fellowship because there are so many different departments and there's so many different pockets in such a large organization that I don't feel entirely connected to everything that's happening and I think that if I want to teach something or if I stand for certain values of an organization I want to know that through and through and I can't do that with such a large organization so I know I know that I want to work somewhere smaller and somewhere more consistent as far as like my my teaching opportunities so what's really been exciting for me is lately I've been working a lot with our casting director on auditions for upcoming season and just sort of the life of a casting director I've been helping her out as much as I can and that has unlocked something new for me I'm like oh this is another thing that I actually like I knew I was interested in casting because that's part of being a director but I was like oh wow this is something that could be the next step is maybe you know being an associate casting director somewhere doing a casting fellowship or something like that something within casting so that's been really cool to learn and yeah I guess that's kind of led me to the next step is like okay what's going to get me to the ultimate goal of being an artistic director because I'm not sure that that is necessarily going to happen within the next 5-10 years who knows I know that's my end goal what's the next thing I can learn or what's the next thing I can do and admin to get to that point eventually so that was pretty cool to learn and yeah I think that this which was like honing my skills feeling more confident because my next step is becoming like a freelance designer and the reality of that is taking on a million different jobs at once and being able to say like oh I can also prop this show or also being able on like a slow time to be to go in and work over hire for a show in the prop shop or do like props master at a smaller theater is going to be really good for me and also those skills are sort of transferable to any city that I choose to be in and I don't think I'm going to stay in the bay but because the Berkley Rep has so many yeah I don't know what's next what has really helped about this fellowship was that it has given me so many different I've been able to do so many different things I've been able to do a system direct I've been able to be a teaching artist I've been able to produce community engagement events and I feel like I feel like I love doing all of those different things I also just sort of like Leilani said about I've learned what it's like to be in an institution in a large theater institution and it has it's pluses and minuses for sure and I think that it was very helpful for me to have sort of a safety net but it also has made me think really deeply about what what type of work I want to be creating and also who I want to be creating it with and so I think for me going into the future I I really my goals have become I want to get to know and really hone a community of like-minded artists who want to tell the stories that I want to tell and where we can grow and learn from that collaborative artistry and I'm not sure right now if that's in a large theater institution I think that it's probably not but that doesn't mean that I don't want you know a job in a large theater institution I think that it just means that I have to know that the end goal is to like have a smaller collaborative entity that I want to work with and that's been really helpful just like saying those words out loud and like creating that vision in my mind and I think everyone was saying like this apprenticeship was such a wonderful opportunity for me to figure out at least what I want to do what I don't want to do and it's funny you mentioned casting I spent the summer casting which I loved and then was able to come into this apprenticeship being like this is something I'm interested in I'd like to do it as much as I can and I and I've been lucky to do a lot during my apprenticeship so casting is definitely something I'm very interested in looking into but I've also learned that I want to work in a small theater like this both victory gardens and magic are small nonprofits and it's just this wonderful opportunity to kind of get your hand in everything and to see how everything is running there's no real secrets between departments it's it's a really wonderful opportunity to just look into all facets of how this how the art is made so I'm hoping to find a position in a small theater like this so if you're watching we're looking for jobs so we're going to see if there's anyone in the audience that has a question for any of the panelists or myself in regards to internships, apprenticeships, fellowships career in the arts yes so the question was if you're a performer you're really interested in production do you think that an internship apprenticeship fellowship would be a useful opportunity for that, correct? Production, like do you mean backstage or producing sides like this? Production shows being backstage but as like but like the main goal of having a career as a performer but as well like sometimes working in production and in backstage or something yeah so I think I would encourage you to totally apply for an internship just know exactly what in production you want to do because yeah it could mean I want to be you know a costume apprentice and be working in the costume shop all the time you could also just be a production intern like at MTC you can be the intern with our production manager who runs who's the administrator for all of our backstage crews and things like that and so you could do that if you wanted to be in more so of a like admin side to it but yeah I would say absolutely there's no reason why you can't also be a performer and apply for you know an internship backstage that's actually a really great way to make some connections and meet people and get to know other actors because you'll be you know you might be dressing them so it'll be it's a good way to just get your foot in the door so yeah I would say absolutely there's no reason why you couldn't do that what I I'm sorry I was just going to say ACT has like stage management fellows which sort of do that are you still in college? You're a freshman in high school wow is in high school and then also in college you know I would recommend like going doing production work on shows in high school and in college and gaining experience in that first and then applying for like a fellowship or something like that just to see if you like it and what exactly you like about it these fellowships are such amazing opportunities but they are a lot of work they're big time commitments and it's so wonderful if that's what you want to do but I will say I could imagine if it wasn't something I was passionate about applying for a position like this might not have been something I loved and it is something I love because I'm very passionate about this specific thing but I will agree that like in high school and college learning as much as you can doing as much as you can and then gaining that knowledge of the thing that you want to give a lot of your time and heart to is important yeah just try everything I you know I think all of us on this panel will tell you that because we all have done the sort of let's try everything and yeah so just try everything and you'll figure it out your long ten month fellowships apprenticeships I think but when you get to college a lot of summer stock theaters have like three month long programs which is a really great way to figure out like to sort of tip your foot and also work in really like high quality theater or like kind of scrappy theater which is also really fun and like everyone says doing like the theater club in your high school is great but there's also the teen program at the Berkeley Rep we just started or ended the teen onex which was like a really cool way to like put on a whole production and Mara brings up a great point in the teen program and teen council make sure you check that out but other theaters as well have a lot of teen education programs as well which offer opportunities for teens to get involved not just as performers but as designers, as directors and across the boards and even when you get to this level of a fellowship, internship or apprenticeship depending on what they call it for the most part they're all the same they just have different titles depending just put that out there I'm the education fellow and while I do love education I also attend the weekly marketing meetings with the marketing department the education fellow prior to me was more interested in artistic and is acting across the Bay Area so you have countless opportunities no matter what you decide to do to do other things within the realm of art so if we don't have any more little questions from the audience great we're going to wrap up and just very quickly go down the line to your position at your company and the company's name my name is Karina Fox I'm an Artistic Direction Apprentice at Magic Theater I'm Leigh Launey Germanuda I'm the Education Fellow at the American Conservatory Theatre and I'm Alessandro McLaughlin I'm one of the Artistic Direction Interns at Marin Theatre Company I'm Nayula Harper Melvo and I'm the Community Producing Fellow at American Conservatory Theatre and I'm Karina Adams I'm the Education Fellow at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and I want to thank you for tuning into this create us careers panels on how to apply for a fellowship, internship, apprenticeship Thank you