This summer, I interned with the host committee for the 2021 Women Playwrights International Conference (WPI), which will be held in Montréal in June 2022. Bringing together my two majors, Theatre and Gender Studies, this was the perfect internship for me. Women Playwrights International Conferences have been instrumental in generating opportunities for women theatre artists where traditionally there have been few. By encouraging, creating, and assisting the development of women playwrights as well as their craft, these conferences highlight stories that need to be heard from voices that often are not.
A joint Honours student in Gender, Sexuality, Feminist and Social Studies (GSFS) and Theatre, I have been able to offer a deep commitment to feminist values and a skillset well-suited to the host committee’s needs. Developing and implementing a new process for anonymous adjudication and strategizing how best to present our conference to potential funders, I have used my studies in GSFS to enhance the important mission of this conference. In particular, I have advocated for including playwrights from diverse backgrounds in the conference and devised a system for holding ourselves accountable in pursuing an intersectional approach because my GSFS degree has impressed upon me the importance of intersectionality in feminist spaces.
I also took on devising how to make the conference proceedings available online. Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that contingency plans are both a necessity and an opportunity for staying connected during uncertain times. Proactively designing the conference to include the option to participate virtually also makes the conference more inclusive by creating opportunities to participate for those who cannot attend because of financial restraints or disability. My background in GSFS has helped me see that beyond the importance of inclusivity, accessibility actually benefits everyone. Ultimately, we decided to postpone the conference a year from its original dates in June 2021.
My objectives in undertaking this internship was to learn about the administrative side of the theatre world, preparing for a career in this field. I was able to do just that, gaining hands-on experience as I drafted a proposal for a Canada Council of the Arts (CCA) grant, facilitated several rounds of adjudication of plays to be featured at the conference, and sent out hundreds of invitation/rejection letters to playwrights who had submitted their work. My responsibilities included: managing the submissions email, organizing about 400 submissions from all over the world into appropriate excel spreadsheets and folders, making anonymous copies of each play submitted for the anonymous adjudication process, keeping track of each play’s score from two rounds of adjudication, creating and sending letters notifying playwrights if their work will be featured in the official conference programming, researching public and private grants, drafting much of the body of our CCA grant, helping write the budget for the CCA grant, contacting academics and local artists to invite them to present at the conference, organizing the workshop and roundtable proposals, notifying those whose workshops and roundtables were selected for the conference, and sending out blast emails with updates about the conference (such as the postponement).
The main highlight from this internship is the amazing team of women I got to work with. Ann Lambert and Laura Mitchell, the co-convenors of the conference and my supervisors, are both incredible theatre artists and creators and have been such an inspiration. They took my ideas seriously and made me feel heard. The other intern and I developed a wonderful comradery over the course of our months working together and we became a well-oiled machine. I really appreciated working on a small team because I got to be involved in some really important projects such as the grant and the adjudication process. My job felt substantial and important in a way that was both educational and rewarding.
Although I am not receiving course credit for this internship, I have certainly learned a lot and gained invaluable experience. This internship has helped me to develop the administrative skills I would need if I ever wanted to start my own theatre company or embark on another artistic project in the future. There is an art to securing funding in the arts, and after this internship, I feel well equipped to do so for my own future projects. To that end, I must extend hearty thanks to the family of Mrs. Judy Patton Hamilton for the generous funding that made this internship possible.
