University-employment transitions in international Performing Arts: The intern’s story

I cannot really trace back my fascination for the performing arts, especially theatre, but this interest was developed quite late in my teens. I do not have a fairy-tale story to share, but I have come across opportunities and experiences that have inspired me. If I have a story, it is more about discovery and some struggling in between.

I had no artistic influences when I was growing up; I attended state schools where artistic education was (and probably is) non-existent. Artistic thinking and research, even now, do not come naturally to me (by artistic I mean free flowing, experimental, result-free, non-economist); until I was fifteen I thought that someone who would like to pursue a career in fine arts needed to know how to draw a straight line without a rule. This changed when I started doing an international pre-university diploma, the International Baccalaureate (IB) in Wales, away from home and in English, my second language. At the UWC (United World College) of the Atlantic I was immersed in a very international arty liberal community. When attending the theatre arts class I found myself deeply interested in issues related to world theatre and performance anthropology. I extensively read Eugenio Barba and still today he is one of my favourite authors. This bit of my education had a tremendous effect on me and my future choices. I am still collecting pieces from that experience, and it feels like I will do that for many years.

When I finished the IB I was looking for something quite abstract within theatre. I did not want (just) acting, or set designing or writing for theatre; I might not have wanted only theatre at all. I also had no idea if I would like to stay in the UK or go somewhere else in Europe. But one summer afternoon I found the University of Lisbon’s performing arts course; oriented to theatre studies, it seemed to balance questions of art, philosophy and the social sciences. It was not a practice-based course: I would not graduate as an actor, set designer, director or a scriptwriter. Moreover it was a course taught not at an arts school but at an arts and humanities college, side by side with old-school courses such as philosophy, history or literature.

I was aware what kind of experience I was signing up for, but this is a course that is very alien to the Portuguese – performance and theatre studies are fairly unknown and people do not understand the curriculum and what use it can have; they think it is a course for failed actors-to-be. I knew I was enrolling in a school of arts and humanities, where I would be exposed to critical and analytical thinking; I would read philosophers, anthropologists and historians and I would only gain from it. The curriculum was broad and apart from the classes in theatre, cinema and history of art we would attend others in philosophy, literature, languages and comparative studies. This mix always made perfect sense to me. We were given the crucial opportunity to relate art and artistic issues to the social sciences, literature and philosophy.

I was looking for an opportunity to study theatre but theatre presented itself to me as collaborative and cross-disciplinary. I wanted to know more about the state of the art but also about the state of the ideas, I wanted to read books and authors I had always heard of, to know currents and shifts of thought, methodologies and artistic movements. I was interested in understanding methodologies of writing and of manipulation of history and opinion. I wanted to know how theatre and the arts were portrayed in society and how that knowledge could empower them. I was concerned with social issues arising from that too. In the end we were well read and encouraged to look at our university education as a broad experience. I can sum up what my university experience meant to me by recalling one dear professor, who was British and used to quote E. M. Forster and the opening sentence of his novel Howards End: ‘Only connect’.

I went passionately through the three-year Bologna Process designed course, with a workload of 20 hours a week. I was granted time and guidance to read and develop course work which really interested and challenged me. I was introduced to major books, series of publications, authors and disciplines. If facing a topic on photography, for example, I read Roland Barthes and I managed to get to know major photographers from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both European and American, and recognized the challenges that photography posed for painting. I know the important impact of photography on early cinema and I can point out how photography and the art of light are present in plays such as The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen. This rough brainstorm is just a departing point.

I have very scattered thinking and that is usually not seen as a good quality. I tend to relate theatre to the fine arts, cinema, literature, world history and the history of ideas. I have come to realize that I am terrible at chain thinking – if this is this then that is that; my thinking works better in a sensuous, contextual approach starting from some key points and then developing into a wider context. This approach seems to work in the arts very well: I am widely and well read; I can trace ideas historically and know the contemporary trends; I can identify references and names, or if not I know where to look. My university courses have not made me an expert in all those disciplines but have made me able to work with and draw on them when it comes to the performing arts: I am able to create a discourse that is coherent and that connects all my reference points, resulting in a creative, original idea.

I need to stress that my undergraduate programme was not for frustrated actors-to-be or indecisive people. Public opinion still believes that if one cannot give a straight answer – such as I am an engineer, a teacher, a dancer, a philosopher – one is not to be taken seriously. To make this clearer I can give a concrete example: a new undergraduate course at the University of Lisbon called General Studies, which includes subjects from the natural sciences, humanities and arts, appears in the press as a course for indecisive students and students who are still looking for themselves. To me this sounds narrow-minded, demeaning and simplistic.

In my senior year I was presented with the opportunity to do an internship abroad under the Erasmus placement programme. I had heard of the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) in Aberystwyth: colleagues of mine had been there and I knew it had a great resource centre and connections with performance groups and performers from all over the world. After an undergraduate degree, for me everything at the CPR was an opportunity – the administrative work, the publishing, the editions, the bookshop, the festivals, the resource centre, etc. Looking back at my job description at the CPR I realize I learnt how to be organized while doing administrative work. I learnt how to be pleasant and polite with others when talking on the phone, or when answering emails: that is, I learnt how to treat the other side of a personal-work relationship.

My performing arts background gave me an awareness that I could use as an ‘administration and projects assistant plus assistant at the resource centre’: recognizing artists when cataloguing or selling books, and identifying art movements and influences when scanning theatre prints from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries so that I was able to fill in metadata sheets. I became very curious and keen to establish a relation between the prints and theatre; I became very aware of the importance of memorabilia to expand our understanding of theatre and to recover clues from the past. At a place like the CPR at the end of the day it is all about theatre and performance: about theatre-making, thinking about theatre and writing about theatre.

The internship did have some limitations. I was not totally fine doing the administrative tasks, and I would have had to push myself hard to enjoy it. Instead I took refuge in the resource centre; the plus in my job description became my main focus of attention. It turned out to be the best opportunity to get in touch with and to get to know a panoply of performers, companies and works, alongside authors, books, DVDs and other objects. Importantly, I was granted an afternoon a week just to look around the resource centre.

It is important to go to an internship and know what you are doing, but it is also great to be granted some space for improvisation and surprise. An internship should be the best time! It is commitment and responsibility but it is also about the novelty and the unknown. During my time at the CPR it was truly beneficial that I was challenged but also that I was given the opportunity to shift focus and felt comfortable in doing so.

I believe that an internship is a time of testing and developing specific skills, but also, and very importantly, it is also a time for discovery. So it should be OK to change and re-work with the intern his or her tasks, when there is room for that. I did not gain much from my arts and administrative part of the internship; the revealing part was the work I did at the resource centre.

When my university class finished not many students pursued postgraduate studies. I felt very strongly about doing a master’s degree in an area more closely related to theatre and decided on a Theatre Directing master’s at an arts school in Porto. I chose directing because it is a very engaging activity and I feel an exciting drive to be involved but at the same time the director needs to step back and look at the performance from a distance. Not many of my colleagues pursued careers in the theatre: some took jobs in museums, in communication and public relations, in production, teaching or in research centres. Public opinion tended to say that we were meant to do production jobs in theatres, record companies or art centres. I believe this supposition arose because of the lack of university qualifications in such jobs. Many people have successful jobs being producers or assistants but we are not doomed to do that. After graduating I took a production internship and it did not go well. This was because I was alone working at a newly created dance and theatre company. I had no one to turn to, I did not have the communication and outreach skills needed and I was not granted basic levels of trust to perform some tasks.

Transitioning to the job market has not been difficult, in terms of my abilities to respond to tasks. I am about to finish the masters; meanwhile I have done an internship at the theatre company Hotel Pro Forma in Copenhagen. I got to know Hotel Pro Forma when I was at the CPR. Since then I have always looked up to it and thought it was out of my reach. When the company opened up an internship programme I was very determined to get a place. So I made use of my theory and analytical background from the performing arts course, my experiences at an art school doing my masters, plus my international background. It worked.

By theoretical and analytical background I mean I was introduced to thinking, writing and speaking about complex ideas – to reflect and comment upon them. I had the discipline to read and understand complex authors and texts and to grasp difficult concepts, and that has surely affected my approach to different subjects and my ability to analyse them. This is hard, demanding work and many people might just call it useless – but it is very valuable. Then at the art school the focus was more on the creative processes, the artists’ texts and on the creation of works of art themselves.

At Hotel Pro Forma I met a group of nine other interns coming from areas as different as architecture, dramaturgy, light, sound and marketing. Only three of us had a theatre background. During the internship we worked on the early stages of a new performance. It was absolutely amazing because we were an interdisciplinary team and we were granted time to research, discuss, try out and learn. For me the nature of this internship was totally different. I was just doing it for myself, no university or employee credit attached. Also the dynamic of the internship itself was something else – we were working for Hotel Pro Forma, although our work was not involved with the daily activity of the company; and that took a lot of pressure off. It was more or less an art residency, and for a long time not subjected to the pressure of results.

After returning from Copenhagen I wrote my thesis on Hotel Pro Forma and its creative process, concentrating on researching why it makes theatre the way it does – why it looks like it does, why those performers, why those writers, why those spaces, why that placement of the audience, and so on. The thesis relates aspects of the company’s creative process to aspects of the history of art, aesthetics and history of theatre and performance. I tried hard to understand certain phenomena and to place the company within a paradigm of theatre making. For nearly six months I had found myself moving among paradigms, identities and performing traditions. I then chose to hear Hotel Pro Forma’s voice and what its people said about it, and work from and with that.

In the meantime I was invited to work on three different projects. I am now assisting with the organization of a film festival, I will organize the edition of a book/catalogue on a dance and theatre company and I will teach a class at a theatre and dance vocational school. I was encouraged to write articles for publications and conferences, so I have been doing that and I will have two articles, one on the theatre prints at the CPR resource centre, and another on Hotel Pro Forma, published soon. I have been given these offers because I think, alongside knowledge and skills (writing, public speaking, creative thinking), employers look for a certain attitude, ability to adapt and commitment that I am able to offer.

My international education and experience define who I am and what I do. I am very curious to know what is happening around the world and in the art scene. I check international websites and publications; I very often go to performances and to the cinema; I travel when I get the chance. I am fluent in English; I have lived, studied, volunteered and interned abroad. I came to realize not long ago that I always think on a worldwide scale. I have no mental borders. I am not bound to geographical, cultural or social boundaries. This international background and open mind certainly stand out for employers, together with a large ability to adapt, to be generous and to work hard.

On an international level I think I would be an eligible candidate when applying for another internship or a job in the performing arts but not only there. I have been tempted to apply to an advertising and design company, for example. Unlike British and American students I was not encouraged to take internships or jobs while still at university but I have done that after graduation. I believe performing arts alumni have different skills and are capable of working in a variety of contexts, from entertainment to social projects.

When I look around I find that the friends who are reluctant or wait too long to choose a job, an internship or further education are the ones struggling most in the job market. We need a certain drive and unsteadiness to make us get out of bed in the morning and, when out on the street, a feeling that makes us take the most unlikely steps or choices. I believe it is crucial to keep moving, to meet people, to know how the dynamics work; it is crucial to make ourselves desirable candidates for any kind of job.

When I think of future job prospects I imagine some possibilities, but I do not have high expectations. I think I would be fulfilled by a job that involved programming for an art centre, theatre or museum – reading about companies and artists, travelling, watching DVDs and performances, talking to artists and designing the place’s programme would be a dream job. I would love to work closely with a company or a group of motivated artists creating performances or even performing spaces or set designs. I would love to create artistic projects out of theatre or cinema archives, reassembling memorabilia or even rewriting the history. I think it would be great to work for an institution like the British Council, because even apart from the cultural department it is such a motivated and open-minded institution. If I was fluent in German I would love to try to work in Germany or at the Goethe Institut; after living in Copenhagen I am in love with the city and the lifestyle, though Danish is almost impossible to learn! I believe I will keep writing articles about areas of interest such as theatre and architecture or theatre and image.

Recently I was asked if I would be happy working in non-theatre projects. I instantly said I would be, but later it got me thinking. I am happy because deep down in my own sense-making all I am doing benefits my theatre experience. Recently I have declined some projects because I am looking for a good environment and conditions wherever I work, projects where I am respected and where there is a good atmosphere alongside nice people. Working in the arts can be tough because people assume you give yourself entirely to the art making. I love theatre but it is not all I am or all I do. I should not have to sacrifice my self-esteem and comfort to make art. So I take every project and learn from it. I do not believe this is damaging my reputation as a director or deviates from a professional path I would like to pursue. I do not take myself too seriously so I do not see these choices as potential threats to my image. I do not know what will happen in the near future and that keeps me going and looking forward expectantly; it keeps me curious, interested and ready to be inspired.