Landry's Last Days (For Now)

Here is a Blog that I asked Landry (our summer intern) to write, reflecting on her last week of work with us. Furious will miss Landry and so will I. We wish her the best because she deserves it. - Nick

Last Blog of the Summer

I have to say, I don’t really want to write this blog because I know that it is the one in which I have to ‘wrap-up’ and say my goodbyes to this internship. Nick asked me a week or so ago what I wanted to get out of my last days here, and my answer was insurance that these are not my last days as a part of Furious.

This internship has been invaluable to me. I have learned things I never could’ve predicted and been lucky enough to work on bits and pieces of almost everything. I learned what goes into a press release, how to use EBay and Craigslist, what a Spuderito is, how to write and distribute a survey, and how to write thank-you and renewal letters to donors large and small. Oh, and to make best friends with Excel Spreadsheets. I also learned the reality of non-profits. Non-profits are messy, unpredictable, and require so much more care than most for-profit businesses with not always as much thanks. But the most important thing I learned is what an amazing contraption Furious Theatre Company really is.

I guess the thing I least expected from this internship was to come out of it with not only connections, but to come out of it with friends. The people I’ve gotten close with in Furious are not only people I immensely admire, but also people I actually want to keep in touch with because they’re all so damn cool. It’s always nice to like the people you are working for, but I think it’s incredibly lucky to actually want to go to work everyday and want to do even tedious tasks because they further the mission of these amazing people and their mission for this incredible company.

I’m not sure what I’ll do everyday without hearing Nick sing all of the incredibly wrong but creative words to my favorite songs. I’m also not sure what I’ll do without him there every Monday morning to discuss the antics of the weekend, or to help me pick out the perfect pair of new sunglasses, or to throw Nerf darts around the room while discussing the day’s goals and occasionally hit me in the face with one (by accident, of course.)

There are parts of every Furious person that I have gotten close to this summer that I want to be exactly like. I don’t want to say I’m obsessed with this company and the people in it, but…I mean…maybe a little. Not to be dramatic, but this internship has changed my life. I have so much more clarity now about theatre and how much work goes into every aspect of it, and I’ve learned even more the importance of being a passionate person. If you’re not doing something you’re passionate about, what’s the point of doing it?

Thank you so much to everyone I had the pleasure of working with this summer, and just being friends with this summer, especially Doug, Brad, Eric, Dámaso, Georgia, Megan, Vonessa, Katie, Christie, Brian, and of course Nick.

I was able to do this internship through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission grant. For those of you that don’t know, this program includes 125 different internships with companies in the arts community in Los Angeles. If these internships don’t exist next year, it will be a huge shame. They are not currently in the 2010 LA County Arts Commission budget, and I can only imagine the detriment to the arts community to not continue to expose the next generation of arts professionals to these incredible companies in such a brilliant way. I, and every other intern I have discussed this with, would without a doubt apply to the program again for as many years as we are eligible. This program presents the best of all worlds, we can make connections for our futures, get a very necessary dose of reality of what the world of the arts really is, give invaluable help to the company we fit best with, and even get paid. The loss of this program would be an undeniable shame. If you are an intern, a mentor, or a person who saw the difference an intern made for a company or the difference the internship made in the intern’s life, please email Anji Milanovic at amilanovic@arts.lacounty.gov. She is fighting to keep the program, and I know showing your support will help immeasurably.