September Adventures

It happened. I fell off the blogging bandwagon…again. But I have a good excuse, I promise! Actually, many good excuses. You see, I’ve been filling my days with Goodman and my weekends with the awesomeness that is Chicago. It can keep a girl busy.

Since my last post, I was fortunate to visit my family at home for Labor Day weekend. I’m so grateful that we are so tight! Much laughter, movie nights, and general celebrating occurred. AND- I finally had that perfect day at the pool. It took all summer to arrive, but I finally had it.

Having returned to Chicago after that nice weekend, things promptly picked up speed. At my internship, I’ve been busy with general office work and meeting preparations, but we are also getting ready for this week’s season opening- a huge deal. I’m also excited to be working on grant writing, my main focus, and learning more about the Goodman’s staff/donors/patrons.

Our intern group is also bonding fast! Between ice cream excursions and seeing shows (The Birds at Berger Park was hysterically funny and downright campy), we are becoming a really cohesive team. It is great to find this kind of camaraderie in a new environment.

Other adventures have included attending the Chicago Air and Water Show a few weeks back (fantastic, despite the sequester-imposed lack of military planes) and observing the RedBull Flugtag yesterday with family friends and fellow aviation buffs. I have no idea how some teams deemed their craft aeronautically sound, but the designs were certainly funny and original. My personal favorite was a glider in the image of a flying monkey from the Wizard of Oz. Brilliant.

I’m also enjoying taking class at Hubbard Street and learning original choreography from Broadway shows. It’s such a rush! It’s also keeping my passion alive for performing. Although I had a great audition in the city a few weeks back, I feasibly can’t perform anywhere until the end of this internship. Most professional auditions are during the day (when I’m at the office), and the nightly commute back to the suburbs would make for a very long night after rehearsals.

In other news, the Goodman staff were kind enough to let me observe an Equity chorus call this week. It was a nice change to be on the other side of the casting table. The experience gave me renewed confidence in my performance ambitions: It is absolutely possible to make it in this business. And I certainly want to try my hand at professional onstage work before I commit to the administrative world. That will always be waiting for me, and circumstances may even allow me to do both. Time will tell!