The Lousy Intern


So I'm sat writing this in the dressing room of the theatre I'm interning for. That may sound glamorous, but this theatre is a black box attached to a primary school on the outskirts of Parma. It's got a very low-key, slightly bohemian vibe, where everyone does everything and there's a little cube shaped key that allows you to get whatever you want out of the vending machine - score! It's such a contrast to the Schauspielhaus where everything was huge and official and I spent most of my time in the office drinking tea and laughing with my boss. Here everything is an organised chaos. I only found out about the weekly happenings yesterday when I sat down in front of my boss (who's called Mario by the way and has such a jolly temperament!) with my diary open and used my hands to show that I meant business and needed to know what the hell I was doing there. It's a lot more hands on and I will be spending most of my time doing workshops, watching rehearsals and perhaps even performing and joining in with the theatre school lessons. So far I'm really enjoying it: I love the atmosphere, the people are so friendly and I feel like I'm going to learn not only lots of Italian but expand my theatre knowledge at the same time.

 However, I feel pretty useless. I have so much I want to give to this internship, I want to do the best possible job, contribute and participate as much as I can, as well as hopefully making some new friends and yet I'm hindered so much by my lack of Italian. When they ask me to do things I just stand there and look bewildered until they've repeated themselves into exhaustion, when I sit and watch performances and rehearsals and they ask for my opinion I have so much to say and yet I stumble clumsily over my words and am unable to say what I want to say in the way I want to say it. It's so annoying because it limits what I can do. For example, the theatre school are currently having a diction lesson and I really want to join in, but I have no idea whether I can and even if I could I can't understand most of what she is saying. There's a lot of talent here and I've already been very inspired by what I've seen. I learnt so much about acting from watching Mario direct one Brecht rehearsal- it was incredible! I'm just so fed up (already!) of being the mute English girl who sits in the corner and smiles to look friendly. I want to join in and stop feeling lousy and be able to interact and question and perform! I'm so ready to DO something and not have time to sit blogging and take pictures of myself in the mirror. Waaaaaah.

2 comments :

  1. Take it one step at a time. It will come.

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  2. That can be frustrating, but I think you'll be surprised at how much you Learn from this internship! Www.sjcurtis.blogspot.com

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