The View from Here
As the end of this season-long internship draws near, I have been thinking about all of the reasons I decided to come to Portland. I was cleaning out a sketch book last weekend and found notes from my Portland Stage intern interview, as well a pro and con list I had made, when I was attempting to choose between the Portland Stage Scenic Design/Carpentry internship and a Literary and Audience engagement internship at another much larger LORT theater. I was offered both internships within a day of each other and, as I went to a very well rounded liberal arts college, I did not know how to view the choosing of one specific path as a widening of possibility and not a closing of doors. So naturally, I made a massive pro and con list with my best friend. Pro factors I had circled on the Portland side of the chart include “hands-on,” “time to make my own art,” “ability to wear overalls to work,” “interns picked as a collaborative ensemble,” “interns valued,” and the “Portland Art/Food Scene,” among others.
In the end, many factors went into the decision to cram all of my and my boyfriend Ben’s belongings into our little Honda and drive all the way from one coast to the other in four days, leaving my beloved city of Tacoma, WA so far behind. But ultimately it was something that an intern at that other, larger theater said to me during my decision-making process that sticks with me today. She too was at the close of her intern experience and after a year working at one of the largest and most successful theaters in the country, she said to me that she felt that the process of making American Theater was broken beyond repair. She said that she had graduated from college and begun her internship believing that anything was possible in the arts, but now everything seemed diminished; she told me everything was “less shiny” somehow.
Over these past months I have sometimes wondered if I made the right choice in moving to Portland. But I am standing on the other side of my internship process tired but not exhausted, stretched but not broken, critical but not cynical, and positive that I wish to become a theater artist in every sense of the word. I am grateful that I am not standing where she stood. The view from here is wide and the sky is so blue.
PortlandStage 