Despite living several thousand miles away in Arizona I have spent the last six weeks interning with Metta Theatre, a theatre company in the UK, all entirely digitally! It’s been an experience that I will not forget any time soon. You never quite know what you are capable of when you have to manage your time yourself and keep yourself accountable for your own actions while others are relying on you to do your job. My personal experience was positive even with drastically different time zones due to my freedom to work at my own pace. There were some disadvantages that I didn’t think of until I was put in this position, but I learned a lot by working through them.
With a background in management I never would have considered doing an internship for a theatre company, however, it has proven to be a great learning experience for me. When I met Poppy and Will they made me feel welcome from the first day. I never actually realized how much goes on in the background of musical theatre until you're the one helping behind the scenes. Many of the tasks that I was required to do was to research different types of media areas to be able to help Metta Theatre reach more people. Due to the huge time difference for me, working later in the day/night was an advantage because I was able to get help when needed and it fit better into my normal work schedule back in the US.
One struggle I had was finding motivation at the end of my day to do work that was required of me. I had to force myself to get work done as soon as I was able to rather than waiting until the last minute. The way I made sure that I would use my time wisely to complete tasks is by giving myself rewards once I was done with them. Some type of rewards that I would give myself when I completed the task would be a cupcake or sometimes an ice cream that I’d been waiting for all day. When I would finish my big project I would always treat myself a little bit by getting myself a coffee from my favorite coffee shop.
Another challenge was the way they utilized their social media accounts. The company has a specific tone that they use on social media, which took me a little longer to try to understand. I was more familiar with doing straightforwardly simple or funny posts, so learning to use social media as a tool to promote the theatre was new to me. And as well as their own company account they also have a separate account for one of their productions, which has a different tone again. It’s like learning how to do an impression of someone - learning how to speak with their voice. Metta Theatre tends to go for heartfelt messages that are also funny and entertaining, and they hashtag absolutely everything in a semi-ironic fashion. #Everything. Maybe it’s a British thing… #Maybe.
Running social media has taught me quite a lot about how to phrase things and how to use social media as a tool to promote a business. The great thing about the internship is that I had the assistant producer, Ellen, to help me whenever I needed it. One huge help was the twice-weekly Zoom meetings to make sure everyone was on the same page and moving forward together.
I am very grateful for Metta Theatre for giving me this opportunity to grow my own skills and the chance to learn from everyone. If you are ever in a position of doing an internship I can honestly say that doing it virtually is overall a benefit due to scheduling, not having to travel to work, and being able to learn how people work and interact in different parts of the world. It really was a great opportunity to explore different areas that I can be passionate about workwise.
#AndLearnToNailTheHashtagThing
Sarah Rusnak