“ Hallie Woods  is a sophomore at Middlebury College. She is majoring in Theatre and English. This summer, through the generous funding of the Middlebury Arts Council Committee, she interned at Town Hall Theater, located in the town of Middlebury.”

Over the summer, I interned at the Town Hall Theatre, right in the heart of downtown Middlebury. I had had the pleasure of working with the executive artistic director, Doug Anderson, in two shows during my freshman year and was tremendously excited when he offered me a position as the theatre’s technical intern for the summer. As a theatre major, I believe that learning about all aspects of the theatrical world is important, even though my focus is primarily in acting and playwriting. To have an understanding of the way lighting and sound design work, one enables oneself to give a better performance or write a better scene by taking advantage of these systems. It was with this idea that I set out to Middlebury and the Town Hall Theatre for the summer.

In the theatre world, everything is always changing, and thus I was exposed to many different productions and projects over the course of two months. In particular, I had the pleasure of putting up two shows, both of which I worked on in different capacities and learned something new from each.

The first of these shows was the dark comedy Speed the Plow by David Mamet, put on by the Middlebury Actor’s Workshop. The play itself is an extraordinarily funny piece about the danger of being used for one’s social position, a theme woven into the vulgar dialogue and witty characters. For this show, I was on what’s called the “run crew,” meaning I moved sets during the scene changes and communicated with the stage manager in regards to having actors in places before each act began. I also was given the all important job of ringing the phone during the first act. A moment of theatrical greatness, and possibly the most noteworthy line on my resume, I’m sure. I may jest about it now, but in all honesty, my work on Speed the Plow taught me the importance of cooperating with the rest of the production team, and the careful planning that goes into simply the backstage element of a show.

The second show I worked on in a larger capacity was Woody Guthrie’s American Song, put up by the Vermont Stage Company. I was the lighting board operator, which meant that during the show I was executing the light cues, and before the show opened I was stressing out writing those same light cues under the direction of a veteran lighting designer who was known for his gruff demeanor and not his patience. This was my first experience working with professionals on such an intimate level and I realized that there are so many pieces that go into making a production look and work correctly, and that stress is part of that job.

It made me appreciate the fact that I was usually the actor in these situations, and I will forever be much more patient during any cue to cue rehearsal that stretches into the wee hours of the morning. Working on this show in particular was such a learning experience, because I essentially was doing the course work of Lighting Design One in the span of a single week. That was the beauty of my internship, the fact that I took so much away with me that I can readily apply to my future work in theatre at the college and even after I graduate.