Belfast Maskers 2010 summer interns (clockwise from back left) Nicholas Abounader, James Knight, Randy Nichols Jr., Reid W. Connell, Rebecca Stuart, Clare Olson, Elise Morrow-Schap pause from their busy schedules for a quick snapshot on the Belfast Maskers Festival Stage in Steamboat Landing Park.
The Belfast Maskers Summer internship program was started by artistic director Aynne Ames in 2006 after she’d decided to mount an ambitious production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with a large cast, music, songs, and dancing. Outside. She had seen Steamboat Landing Park and thought it was the ideal venue for the much-needed expansion of Belfast Maskers productions. Undaunted by the multitude of people convinced it would be a debacle, Ames plowed ahead with her plans to realize her dream of live theater by Belfast’s beautiful bay. She knew she would need help and knew where she could find it. Ames drew from her many connections throughout the theater community in Maine, New England, and beyond to bring in four interns to complement her ensemble cast -as well as perform technical work. Interns painted, constructed and dressed sets, assisted with lighting and sound design, then performed alongside local talent as some of the principal roles in the show. The production was a spectacular success, as was the next year’s “Carousel” for which she again brought in interns. The following year she expanded the program to include some mostly technical internships, continuing this year.
A Belfast Maskers internship is a symbiotic relationship, as the students and recent graduates bring the benefit of their recent training, education, and experiences to share with the community theater and take away work experience in a practical, supervised theater setting -not to mention a summer spent in beautiful, coastal Maine. In Aynne’s assessment, the program “…allows young pre professional actors to stretch their wings in a new location with different directors than the ones they have been working with in college. It also flushes out their resumés with major roles they are unlikely to have played in college. It gives our local Maskers, who cannot go “there” to work with others, a chance to work with other like folk by bringing those folks here to Belfast and everyone gets better when the bar is raised higher. Each time a production is seen as of professional quality , it draws more and more people both as audience and volunteers and that is better for everyone.”
Interns are given a stipend for living expenses; local Maskers volunteers and supporters provide a place to live for out-of-towners.
Interns have come from Belfast, other parts of Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, D.C., and as far away as Ireland. This year’s interns began arriving from a variety of locations in mid-June, ready to dive right into the work required to present the first play on Belfast Maskers new Festival Stage, William Inge’s “Picnic”. They joined a cast and crew of local volunteers, both seasoned Belfast Maskers performers and relative newcomers, to make the Pulitzer Prize-winning American play a hit. Ames added, “As talented and generous as our local folks are, they still have to hold jobs in the summer, and they have family responsibilities. Yet, putting up (now) two shows in this kind of time period requires that we have some folks who can be dedicated to only the theater –both tech and performance, and all interns do both.”
