Our prop interns in recent seasons spend the majority of their work hours here with Kristen Gribbin, our prop director, on a wide variety of craft & building projects for each show. They get pressed into service with Brian Kessler & the scene shop staff when the workload there exceeds the prop shop needs. Along with all the interns, they work with Reid G. Johnson as part of his lighting crew on the changeover from one production to the next. And often when there's a show needing a larger crew backstage in performance, they'll spend a month working alongside Jeremy Burzuk, our head stage technician. So they get perhaps the widest technical experience while here of any of our interns. Here's what some of them have done since:
Eric Niece, prop intern '09 - '10, also appeared onstage in that season's "A Christmas Carol" and stayed in greater Detroit acting at several are theatres or working in technical theatre jobs (one of these being ass't to the technical director at adjacent Oakland University). He came back to MBT full-time for the '14 - '15 season as one of our scene shop carpenters but has left us once again to be an instructor & technical director for Rochester College. He does continue to act as well at metro Detroit theatres.
Katie Vota, '10 - '11, went to Peru on a Fulbright Grant for a year after her internship here to study Andean back-strap weaving & natural dyeing at the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. She then moved to Chicago for graduate school getting her MFA in Fiber & Material Studies at the School of the Arts Institute while also having exhibits of her work at Threewalls gallery and at Sector 2337 in Chicago as well as at the Indianapolis ArtCenter & at the Krasl Art Center in St. Joseph, MI. Currently she's manager of a gourmet food company in Chicago while finishing the design & build of Fat Rice (a Bon Appetit rated restaurant) and designing the textile program for and teaching at Marwen (non-profit K-12 education).
Teresa McKenzie, '11 - '12, spent the season after her internship with us as the Scenic Artist (another area of her theatre expertise) for Cohoes Music Hall in Cohoes, NY. She then returned to her home state of Virginia and made a career change using her college minor in elementary education instead of her theatre major and has been working as a pre-school instructor.
Stephanie Baugher, '12 - '13, has since then worked as Props Master for Tibbits Summer Theatre in Coldwater, MI and The Black Hills Playhouse near Rapid City, SD. Currently she is back in Detroit at Wayne State working on a graduate degree in scene design. Several of her designs for scenery or work for props have been onstage at the Hilberry Theatre in the last couple years. Her next scene design there will be for "Love's Labours Lost".
Erin Brandt, '13 - '14, after her season here spent a season working on props for Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, PA. This year she has started in the Props Technology program at Ohio University in Athens, OH working toward her Master of Fine Arts.
Angie Kurtz, '14 - '15, our most recent props intern, is another who's left MI for Chicago. She's now the Properties Assistant at Drury Lane Theatre in Oak Brook, IL as well as the Assistant Properties Designer for "The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe" at First Folio Theatre. She's filling any available time with sewing a line of animal-themed purses & doing work on commission - particularly for cosplayers at conventions such as ComiCon.
