Welcome back readers! It’s exciting to be back on the Bradley Her Campus page. Today I will be talking about my summer internship at the Black Ensemble Theater.
First, a little background on the Black Ensemble Theater. It was founded in 1976 by, the one and only, Jackie Taylor. She has written and produced more than 100 plays and musical biographies. She is the one who put together this program to help the kids in the community. The program serves as a way to get kids involved in something that will give them better footing in life. As an added bonus this was a paid internship. Working so closely with Jackie Taylor and professional performers really helped the foundation of the program. I want to thank her for this amazing program she put together. I would also like to thank my amazing instructors: Tia Jemison, Michelle Renee Bester, Vincent Jordan, and Robert Reddrick.
For eight weeks, different people of different ages and backgrounds came together to create one unique show. This consisted of writing the scripts, choosing the name of the show, casting each character, blocking each scene, learning music, tech for lights and sound, learning choreography, and rehearsing the show over and over again. We did everything by ourselves with very little help. We only had four hours a day, Monday through Thursday. This is not a lot of time when it comes to putting together a show. I had to compare this to my regular rehearsal schedule with Bradley University’s theater department. Bradley rehearsal is normally four and a half hours, six days a week. This was a big change and one I had to learn to work with. As a reminder to readers, I am a theater performance major at Bradley University. So being in a theater after hours is nothing new for me. I think my favorite part about the program was seeing every aspect of a performer’s journey. It is very different from Bradley’s process but has the same amount of layers.
The last thing I really want to talk about is the people. I made many ongoing relationships with the instructors and other interns that continue to go to this day. Now, this profession, like any other profession, is competitive. This means all the interns beat out many other candidates for a place in the internship. Additionally, even if you were chosen, you weren’t guaranteed to stay the full length of the program. That being said, everyone who completed the program became really close considering we were together almost everyday for two months. The bonds that we made went through everything. These bonds went up and down, we were mad at each other for a couple of hours or days, we would all sit down and apologize, we had crazy energy days, and days where no one could stay awake.
This program was a great opportunity and I can not thank the Black Ensemble crew enough for their help and guidance. Our show was named “Behind The Ages.” If you would like to watch it, you can find it here.
Thank you for sharing your time with me, and I hope our readers are happy to have us back.