Catching Up

It's been... eleven days?... since my last post. Oops.

So, let's play a little catch-up.

Sunday the 8th was the last day of Session 1 of ASCTC (ASC Theatre Camp - for high schoolers), and I went to their performance of Romeo and Juliet. (There were also two other performances that I didn't make it to.) I was quite impressed with the performance. The campers did excellently! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. (As much as one can thoroughly enjoy a tragedy about young lovers killing themselves.)

Preview performance of Two Gents that evening--I helped out with Tulip again. Dagnabbit that dog is a sweetheart.

Tuesday was technically off, but I decided to go in for about an hour and help out with the understudy rehearsal. The understudies have a walk-through to make sure they know the lines and blocking for their parts, and I sat with Kelley (stage manager) and was on book while she made sure everything looked and sounded right.

Short rehearsal Wednesday, then another preview of Two Gents in the evening--line notes/Tulip duty again! That dog has possibly been the best part of my internship.

Friday was off again, so I took it easy, and then that night was opening night for Two Gents! Technically my last day with artistic, before my move into marketing. Again, I hung out with Tulip and took line notes. (Tough, I know.)

Sunday around noon-ish, my parents arrived in town. They took Lee Ann and me to lunch, then we met up with my aunt and two cousins and we went to see Two Gents together. My aunt took us all out to Emilio's (lovely Italian restaurant on Beverley Street) where I proceeded to stuff my face with delectable lobster bisque and lobster-and-cheese-filled ravioli.

Monday was my first day in the office in the marketing department. Christina (Marketing Coordinator at ASC) didn't have much for me to do yet, so I helped Sarah with archiving. Not terribly exciting, perhaps, but fascinating. I cataloged myriad old programs from way back when the company was Shenandoah Shakespeare/Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, sorted through boxes upon folders upon envelopes of old photos, and rifled through letters, flyers, advertising, brochures, and literature of all kinds.

My parents left town Tuesday (yesterday) morning after treating me to a huge breakfast, and dropped me off for day two in the office. On day two, I was logged into and given control of ASC's Hoot Suite--essentially mission control for all of ASC's social media platforms. A somewhat ominous feeling. I used Hoot Suite to schedule tweets and Facebook posts announcing events for the rest of the week. They typically tweet and update Facebook simultaneously every hour at the bottom of the hour, and Hoot Suite allows you to schedule tweets and updates weeks, even months in advance.

Then, I was given access as an administrator to ASC's Facebook page so that I could start on a Facebook Insights report. When you are an administrator on a Facebook Page, Facebook gives you access to gobs of statistics about what's happening on your Page. Demographics of people who like your page, keeping track of new likes over the lifetime of the Page or over a specific period of time you can specify, which posts received the most likes, how many total people your posts are reaching virally, etc. Christina told me that they haven't created very many insight reports, and so gave me freedom in how I wanted to create it. All the numbers overwhelmed me--SO MANY NUMBERS. And it took me a while to figure out how to crunch them effectively and insightfully, and then how best to report them. I worked on it for the entire second half of the day on Tuesday, then the entire second half of the day today, and finally got it (I think) done.

This morning, I got to sit in on the first dress rehearsal for the new touring troupe's rendition of Love's Labour's Lost. I had never seen, read, nor even read a synopsis of Love's Labour's, so I came in totally blind. And greatly enjoyed myself! I laughed all the way through it, and was generally captivated (as usual, here at ASC) by the storytelling.

In the office again tomorrow and Friday. Saturday night is another performance of Two Gents that I signed up to help with the puppy dog for (this week's canine star is a sweet hound dog named J.R. Ewing).

In the meantime, Lee Ann and I are house-sitting for our internship supervisor, Sarah, and her husband, and taking care of their puppy dog Alle (short for Alleghany - who I also met on my first day in Staunton).

(Is it just me, or does my life sound like it revolves around dogs?)