With a Passion for Theatre, Alumna Prepares for the Juilliard School

Chills ran down her spine just from hearing the name: The Juilliard School. Kelsey Pulzone ’14 accepted a stage management internship at the renowned Juilliard last month.

“It’s huge — it’s amazing,” she said. “The opportunities that come from this internship will allow me to work with so many different kinds of performances.”

It was in her freshman year at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania that Pulzone realized she wanted to pursue a career in stage management. In a stage management class with Margaret Ball, D.M.A., associate professor and chair of theatre, Pulzone would raise her hand to answer every question and volunteer to work behind the scenes at every performance.

“I liked the responsibilities of the stage manager,” she said. “Actors will come to me when they need help — I like being their helper.”

While at ESU, she won a national Stage Management Fellowship at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. After graduation, she packed her bags and headed to New York City to intern at the New York Fringe Festival and has since worked with the New York Deaf Theatre Company and the Present Theatre Company, Inc. She was an assistant stage manager on an off-Broadway production for Abington Theatre Company. Most recently, she was the assistant stage manager for Writopia Lab’s Worldwide Plays Festival in New York, which celebrates the work of playwrights ages 6 to 18.

As a stage manager, Pulzone is always the first one in and last one to leave. She spends some of her days piled up in paperwork and emails and other days in hours of rehearsals. To date Pulzone has worked with 53 plays. In each of those plays she worked with large groups of diverse people.

“Fifty-three plays and not a single diva,” she said. While people might think that working for over 12 hours a day with a group of actors is the most challenging part of her job, Pulzone wants to debunk that myth.

“The best part of what I do has been the people I’ve met along the way,” she said. Pulzone explained that she is working in a field where she is not expected to know everything, and learns from her mentors daily.

But one of Pulzone’s first mentors dates back to her time on campus. “I still reach out to Dr. Ball every time I need advice,” she said. “She was one of the first people I called when I first heard from Juilliard.”

Her time at ESU prepared her to take on big city living by introducing her to faculty members who pushed her to be better every day.

At Juilliard, Pulzone plans on being the best she can be.

“This is an opportunity unlike any other,” she said. “At Juilliard, you figure it out on your own— you see what you’re made of.”

The Juilliard School of dance, drama and music was founded in 1905. With a mission to “provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors from around the world,” Juilliard is the alma matter of famous actors including Robin Williams, Christopher Reeve and Christine Baranski.

Pulzone will start at Juilliard this September.

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