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June 25, 2007

I have been an apprentice at the Williamstown Theater Festival for about a week and a half. The position is at once staggering, intimidating and inspiring. Our two acting teachers broke the ice on the first day by teaching a two hour class that involved improv games and a dodge ball battle of the sexes. The girls lost this battle all three times. Both sides fought with tremendous commitment. One male apprentice had his knee severely injured.

We were greeted on our second night here with an audition for various main stage shows and other opportunities. Each of the 70 apprentices performed a prepared monologue. We were all amazed to find that the atmosphere of the auditions was completely supportive and noncompetitive. I sat in that room for three hours completely enraptured and awed by the amazing pool of talent before me. From the conversations I had with other apprentices after the auditions, we all felt the same way. Because I'm younger than most of the apprentices, I am delighted to find a bar that is raised very high. I am also learning a lot about the business, and to get an honest account of what it is to be out in New York, of how hard it is to audition every day.

Apprentices have assignments seven days a week, and our schedule, like the festival's schedule, runs on a day-to-day basis. Every evening at about nine o'clock a mob of apprentices swarms the callboard to discover their fate. Some are elated with a day off, or maybe just class in the morning, others groan at a morning class, four hours of carpentry, and an evening rehearsal. In this way, the program is very individualized. Not knowing what to expect from the day ahead is sometimes frustrating, as it makes one's evening plans a little dicey, and the work and play time come in extremes. This week I'm doing wardrobe for a show and am needed for at least seven hours a day. Last week I had two days off.

In many ways Williamstown feels like summer theater camp for adults. A few days ago some of my friends and I had the evening off so we took an impromptu day trip to Vermont and got lost amongst the chocolate shops and townies. One night we had a power outage so decided to make s'mores outside and play the acoustic guitar. Wal-Mart trips are frequent. On Sunday nights we have group barbeques. The motto of the apprentice program is "it is what you make it." So in addition to these fun adventures, some of my friends and I have decided to make something of our time here and to take full advantage of the pool of talent readily available to us. We have found a play called 'The Ladybird' that we hope to work on for the rest of the summer. We are going to start rehearsals tomorrow, and if all goes well, we might try to produce it in New York when the program ends. I can't wait to see what comes out of it!

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