Deciding the next step for your career, and when to take it, is a challenge that all college seniors face at some point. For Katherine French of Springtown, Pa., a December 2018 graduate of East Stroudsburg University, the answer was an internship with the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
French, who earned her degree, summa cum laude, in theatre with concentrations in acting for theatre, television and film and in technical theatre, had planned to stay at ESU for the spring 2019 semester to complete a minor in English.<\/p>\n
A meeting with Margaret Ball, D.M.A., professor of theatre and interim associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, gave French a new set of options. \u201cDr. Ball had a list of internships available for the spring, including several at the Kennedy Center,\u201d French said. \u201cAfter a phone interview with Anne-Carolyn Bird, the executive and artistic assistant manager, I was offered an artistic and operations internship.\u201d<\/p>\n
During her 16-week internship, French will be working in production management, company management and administration. She will schedule auditions and rehearsal spaces and do strategic planning for a project called \u201cOpera in the Outfield.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll also be helping with budgeting documentation,\u201d French added. \u201cI\u2019ve had some experience with budgeting as president of Stage II (ESU\u2019s student theater organization). I hope to learn how the budget for such a huge operation is decided.\u201d<\/p>\n
French is looking forward to expanding her experience with opera, a genre she first encountered through the ESU theatre department\u2019s educational trips to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City arranged by Yoshinori Tanokura, associate professor of theatre and interim chair of the department. \u201cDuring some of the rehearsals at the National Opera, I\u2019ll be shadowing the stage managers to learn how running an opera production differs from a theatre production,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
An actress since she was eight, French began her theatre studies at ESU with a concentration in acting for theatre, television and film. \u201cThe theatre department offered me many opportunities to explore options in technical theatre,\u201d she noted. \u201cI like acting and hope to do more, but only occasionally since I\u2019m now more interested in management.\u201d<\/p>\n
At ESU French appeared in The 39 Steps<\/em>, Anon(ymous)<\/em> and Our Town<\/em>. She was assistant lighting designer for Godspell<\/em>, stage manager for The Library<\/em> and The Laramie Project<\/em>, assistant director for The Crucible<\/em>, assistant stage manager for A Doll\u2019s House<\/em> and Little Shop of Horrors<\/em>; and one of the directors for Almost, Maine<\/em>, the 2015 Stage II production.<\/p>\n French earned an honorable mention award for stage management excellence for her work on The Laramie Project<\/em> at the 2018 Region II Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). Last summer she was a box office assistant with the Berkshire Theatre Group in Pittsford, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n Making the decision to graduate in December and take the opportunity offered by the Kennedy Center internship wasn\u2019t easy, \u201cAfter living in rural Pennsylvania almost all of my life, living in Washington, D.C. will be a big adventure,\u201d French said. \u201cI\u2019m happy Dr. Ball and Professor Tanokura both urged me to take this chance.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKatie will be following the path of other successful ESU theatre grads who have established exciting careers in the field of stage and production management,\u201d Ball noted. \u201cMajoring in theatre really does develop the entrepreneurial and \u2018soft\u2019 skills needed to enter the workforce,\u201d Tanokura added. \u201cESU theatre graduates are prepared to enter the entertainment field, which is such an important part of our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cESU gave me a lot of experiences and I\u2019ll miss everyone here,\u201d French added, \u201cbut it\u2019s time to move on to the next chapter. I hope to gain as much experience as possible from this internship because you don\u2019t know what connection might bring you your next job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Deciding the next step for your career, and when to take it, is a challenge that all college seniors face at some point. For Katherine French of Springtown, Pa., a December 2018 graduate of ESU, the answer was an internship with the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":18281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,42,58,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-release","category-slider","category-theater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18279"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18283,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279\/revisions\/18283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}