My Internship Experience - AKA, how I spent my Summer

Guess who's back from her blogging break? That's right, me! With only a month left in Summer, it's time to get back into this blogging thing after my absence. It was nice taking a temporary break, and I really wouldn't have had the time (or energy) to blog this summer if I had tried. I'm really excited to get back to blogging.

This summer I had the incredible opportunity to intern at the Village Theatre on their amazing production of Beauty and the Beast. While this production was part of their Kidstage Summerstock, it was a beautiful production with an amazingly talented cast. I'm really sad that the show is closed, because it was so much fun.

Photo Via 

Photo Via 

There was a cast of 50, most of which had 2-3 costumes. Luckily we didn't have to make all of them in the short 2 months we had to pull everything together. The theatre has a huge stock of costumes crammed into a closet far too small and we also received a ton of costumes from one of the local high schools that just did this show.

As Costume Design Intern I did a variety of jobs including cutting, sewing, fitting, and making fit adjustments. During the run of the show I also filled the roll of Dresser, which is someone who maintains costumes and helps actors in and out of costumes before, during and after shows as well as laundering and making any repairs that need to be made during the run.

From the Finally

My favorite part of the show. I watched it from the wings at every performance.

Our Belle and Maurice

I found that my favorite part, and the most fun, was the Dresser job. Running around backstage, making sure all of the costumes looked just right, and keeping everything organized is right up my alley.

We had several quick changes throughout the show, which we divided between the four of us in the costume crew, plus our wig master. The fastest quick change we had we got down to about 35 seconds, and that includes a wig change.

You know how they say with live theatre something goes wrong at every performance? Well, it's true. The audience usually just doesn't know. Things get a little chaotic backstage, especially when you have a dozen actors doing a quick change for the biggest number of the show and pieces suddenly go missing or break. But you keep going, and either find the missing piece or make do without it.

It was such a wonderful experience and I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to intern on this show. I hope that I will be able to continue working in theatre in the future.