A new view.

My internship with the hurrah Players really started about 15 years ago when I started taking my first classes here. I was only six years old when I started taking Musical Theatre and it was shortly after starting classes that I was cast in my first production "Cinderella". After those first few classes and that first production, I was hooked on Hurrah and could never seem to get enough! I continued taking classes and auditioned for just about every show. Once I reached Middle School, I knew that I had the acting bug and so i began doing Theatre with my school as well so that there would never be a moment in my life when I didn't have some sort of rehearsal to attend. I slowly started moving towards working strictly with school productions and began auditioning for the Governor's School for the Arts. as i moved into high school, I began to think about where I wanted to go in my life and what my ideal profession would be.

When I graduated high school, I had already been accepted into Virginia Wesleyan College and began taking classes. I still was not sure at this point what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that I still loved theatre and I wished there was some way for me to stay connected to the theatre, but in a way that allowed me to see it from a different point of view. I decided then that I would become a business major while working on a theatre minor so that I could stay within the theatre world even through college. It wasn't until I was a junior in college that I decided to try to find a way to make business and theatre work together. I knew this wasn't a revolutionary idea in the eyes of other theatre professionals, but it was certainly something new for all of my business teachers to work with.

As I approached my senior year of college, I began considering the possibility of doing an internship as my final semester instead of taking any classes. I weighed the options of sitting in class and taking more notes, or going out into the world and gaining real life experiences in a field that I was interested in. I decided that the real life experience would be the better option!

And so my search began to find a business that would take me as their intern, and The Hurrah Players came to my mind. I wasn't sure if they had ever had an intern or if they would be able to have an intern, but I still gave it a try and here I am! I called Hurrah and spoke to Katie and after having a meeting with her, decided that this would be a great way to see how theatre works as a business.

Being an intern at Hurrah really means a lot to me and my education because I get the opportunity to learn about how theare is brought to the people and everything it takes to keep Hurrah going. Hurrah works just like any other business in many ways, but it also has some unique qualities that give me good exposure to things they haven't taught in classes. these differences will help me be more prepared for the future and teach me things about theatre beyond the performance. I plan to use this experience to guide me towards a future career path that will feed my hunger for theatre and prepare me for the business world.

Shannon Agostino
Hurrah Players Intern