Return of the Intern!

Apparently one summer of working as a literary management intern wasn't enough to scare me off entirely--I'm going back to the wild and woolly world of regional theatre! And I'm incredibly excited about it. I just found out this morning that I've been offered the intern position at McCarter Theatre, located on the campus of (though not really affiliated with) Princeton University in New Jersey! So, I will head out there sometime in August, and be working there for about a year.

My duties will include reading scripts to consider for production, facilitating and conducting dramaturgical research, attending artistic department staff meetings, observing rehearsals, dramaturging a high school student playwrighting festival, helping out with McCarter's in-festival of new work, and attending productions in New York to scope them out for the theatre. Al this in addition to the slightly less glamorous but just as necessary general administrative work like photocopying and script logging and office correspondence and such. McCarter has a lot of exciting projects coming up and is very invested in new work development (Emily Mann, their artistic director, is a playwright herself), so it should be a very exciting position, and I'm sure I will learn a ton.

In additional benefit, there will be a whole handful of supercool people I know living in that area next year. From Eli Ferguson, one of the leaders of my high school Bible study group, and her husband and soon-to-be-two little girls, to Kristy Roberts, current director of Tacoma College Ministry, to Jessica Lee, an amazing woman and one of my closest friends from the college fellowship group of the church I've been attending up here in Seattle... Not to mention Kate Fox and Amy Wong, two of my closest friends from high school, who will both be living a hop, skip, and a train ride away in New York City (where, did I mention, my job will actually be paying for me to go see theatre... did I mention that?!?) Oh my goodness, it couldn't get much better!

We're still working out my starting date (I'm really holding out to be able to make it to at least a good part of Running Camp, although ideally they'd like me to start at the beginning of August), but sometime this summer I'll be driving out there (woohoo, cross country road trip!). They provide housing, in apartments near the theatre, where I'll have my own room and live with a couple other interns. They even raised the weekly stipend a bit this year from years previous--so some nights I'll get to put butter on my top ramen! (Just kidding, they actually pay quite well, for a theatre internship.) I've been holding my breath for a couple of months now about this internship, which felt right from the moment I first found out about it, so I am so incredibly relieved and elated to have gotten the yes!

So, that was today... But I realized I haven't really posted much for over a month, so you might be wondering what else I've been up to. Well, since you asked... It's been a great month. I spent a lovely Easter up in Anacortes with Doug's parents, and then I visited Coach and Coach Singer (and got stranded up there by a horrible stomachache that was entirely my own fault (though perhaps exacerbated by Coach's bizarre insistence that port wine and chocolate would clear things up--my condition declined rapidly immediately thereafter, so I'm still a little dubious about the medicinal veracity of his claim)).

I saw a couple of interesting plays, including My Name Is Rachel Corrie at the Seattle Rep. That play--which is about an American girl in her 20s who went to Israel as an activist and got run over by a bulldozer while protesting the destruction of Palestinian homes and was killed--has been garnering the kind of controversy one has come to expect from any stance taken on the conflict brewing over there. Mostly, the play served to add fuel to my growing regret about how possible it is for those of us privileged to live in peace, safety, and prosperity to close our eyes and ears to the fact that most people in this world are not nearly so fortunate. This makes it easy for us to convince ourselves that we have somehow earned and are deserving of our lifestyle, and keeps us from feeling compelled to use the blessings we have been given to ensure that all people live in comfort and justice. I've had a couple of experiences recently that have begun to drive home to me, in very minor ways, how it might feel like to live in legitimate and immediate fear about my safety and survival from moment to moment, and it makes me ashamed that I don't have to live like that, and that so many people do, and that I am doing so little about it. So that's something I've been pondering a lot lately.

I also went down to San Diego for a week to hang out with my little sister while my mom and stepdad went out of town. We had lots of fun hanging out and dancing and playing and watching such cinematic classics of 80's fantasy filmography as The Never Ending Story. It was great.

I worked on a couple of small writing projects--an article about the recent College Fellowship retreat to Whidbey Island for the Bethany Pres newsletter, and a script about Internally Displaced Persons in Burma for an experiential exhibit being put together by a couple of my friends at SPU. I've really dived back in to working on my novel these past few weeks, as well. I've been doing some background research, and a whole lot of brainstorming, and things are really starting to link together and flesh out in exciting ways. (For more detailed information about that process, you can check out Garbage, my novel progress blog.)

And those are most of the major updates for the moment. Many more fun adventures lie before me in the months ahead, and I will dutifully detail them in subsequent entries, because, well, that's just the kind of person I am. I kind of can't stop myself. Oh, well--until then!