THE FIRST POST!

Hello World!

My name is Derek Smith and I am a proud Cal Shakes intern! Being completely aware of how generic that first sentence was, I must forewarn you all that I've never kept a blog before so I hope that my writing fulfills you like Perez Hilton on a boring day. I also hope to be just as funny and incredible as the breakout internet celebrity of 2007, Stephanie Kalem of The Cal Shakes Bullpen Blog ( calshakesbullpen.blogspot.com ).

So just to give you some of my background at Cal Shakes, I started off as an intern at Cal Shakes in the Artistic Learning Department. As an "AL" Intern, I was the assistant director for a camp production of Richard III and acted as a teacher's assistant during all of the camp classes for middle school students. Doing the AL internship was possibly one of the most fun and educational experiences that I've ever had. I became great friends with the other interns and was given a chance to expand my theatrical perspective.

Today, I am a New Works/New Communities intern. I'm helping out our Artistic Team with taking one of John Steinbeck's books The Pastures of Heaven and turning it into a stage play to be debuted in our 2010 season. I do a lot of basic research about the time period and about the basic history of migrants in California- The California Dream, but not today.
Today has been such a blur of craziness! We're casting for our 2008 season, which I think is really fun. As interns we get to watch most of the professional actor's auditions as well as help out with the general audition process. So lately we've been dealing with converting all 5 million of our head shots and resumes to a digital database. This means scanning many many many head shots manually which is not the funnest thing to do. So after a thrilling hour and a half of scanning head shots into the computer, we go to match the head shots to the online resumes and find just blank, white pictures.

I had scanned 124 head shots on the wrong side. Just one of the many mindless moments that I have at Cal Shakes.

Almost like when Paul (Devo Extraordinare) and I went to the post office with 1000 stuffed envelopes and put them in one by one rather than all at once in the bulk mail door.

I'm so excited to continue this blog and hope to entertain you all with wit that I don't have!

Peace and Love,

Derek