Conversations, dispatches and ideas from the Bush Theatre.
Work Experience at the Bush theatre – Yeunjin Kim
To describe the work experience at the Bush theatre, I need all the splendid words that I know in English. I had my work experience for one week and it changed me a lot. As an international student in London, it wasn’t easy to find out the place to work. So I was very nervous before starting the work experience, but on the first day, staffs in the Bush (including a dog and two cats!) welcomed me warmly which made me more relaxed.
After the warm greeting, I had a tour of the building including the inside of the Holloway theatre and the studio and saw the recorded play ‘Philoxenia’, which was one of the projects associated with the local community. In the afternoon, I was with the Admin team. I had no idea what the admin team do at first, so I’ve got a brief instruction about the role of the admin team. After that, I sort out the invitations which were absolutely new to me. It was the first time to know that they invite each other and that is one way of communicating with people who work in the same field.
On Tuesday I went to two reading groups, which were incredible. I met a lot of people who all have a different background, age, ethnicity which does not always happen to me when I just go to the university. It was interesting to hear what people think about the play and the way they communicate with each other, how they find the solution if they had any kind of problems. I always thought I would work with the professionals after I graduated, but this session made me another interesting choice that I can make in my future.
I was at the front of the house on Wednesday morning, I made a couple of cups of coffee and checked the stock of playbooks. In the afternoon,I watched ‘The High Table’, which was astonishing.
I laughed and cried a lot during the play. I would definitely watch it again with my friends.
I have got some insight into the development department and the literary department on Thursday. I could understand how fundraising works and why is that important. Even though I learned about it during several lectures, I was not sure whether I understood correctly or not but at this time, I can get it easily with the examples about it. I read one play in the afternoon, which was one of the candidates for the future and talked about the play. It was exciting to read an unreleased play.
On Friday morning, I was in front of the house again and learned how the booking system works and observing how staff communicates with the audiences, especially through the phone. I was able to see how they evaluate their next plays in terms of accessibility and diversity. This was also really helpful because I was not realising the importance of the evaluation process before. Now, it’s Friday afternoon, I am writing this for reflecting my whole week.
It was informative and useful not only for my course work but also for my future. Since I came to the UK, I intendedly avoided theatre things for a while because I thought I am not the right person for any theatre works. But I missed theatre more and more when I tried to run away from it, and now I am sure I like the theatre and happy to work for it, all thanks to the Bush theatre.
