T2's New Apprenticeship Program Builds Skills, Launches Careers
T2 Apprentices Eddie Fountain (in front), Amber Holley (l), Israel Rios (center) and Kayleigh Hughes at the opening night celebration for Tiger Style!
Six months ago, Israel Rios had a thriving career in aesthetics: He was working at a bustling salon, and a heavy roster of regulars kept him busy.
“I was ‘adulting’ really seriously,” says Rios with a laugh. “But even though I was making a lot of money, I really wasn't happy. It's funny because you always strive to achieve that type of career accomplishment, but, once you get it, especially if you get it in a career you’re not that interested in, it’s really more unfulfilling than fulfilling.”
So, says Rios, “almost on a whim,” he quit.
“I don't like complacency — I like to learn,” he says. “I like being taught things. I like discovering things, as well. And with a career like that, there's only so much that you're able to do with that type of licensing. So one day, I just woke up, and I thought, ‘I'm not happy. I'm not satisfied with what I'm doing with my life.’”
Then he saw a job notice from TheatreSquared: The company was looking for applicants interested in participating in a new, four-month, paid internship that would link apprentices with an area of focus in the theater they were interested in, giving them the opportunity to explore the possibility of a career in the field of theater. Rios applied to work in the costume design shop.
“I've always had a love for designing and sewing — I don't really have a background when it comes to theatrical designs, but that's what made it even more interesting for me, that it was something that was way out of my comfort level,” he says. “I don't like being comfortable. I like being uncomfortable, almost, in a sense. So that way, my fight or flight kind of kicks in — ‘Okay, you’ve got to make it work.’”
Eddie Fountain found himself in a similar situation. Living in Monroe, Louisiana, the computer programmer had just started training to become an applications programmer with IBM when he saw a notice for T2’s new apprenticeship program. A passionate theater lover, Fountain had longed for a theater career but had hesitated to pursue one, unsure how or where to start.
“I was nervous about applying,” he admits. “I asked my best friend, ‘Should I do this?’, and she said, ‘You love this. This is something you want to do. This is an opportunity. And just like you always want us to follow our dreams, follow yours.’ She whipped me into shape.”
Fountain and Rios’ stories have become more and more common in the age of COVID-19 — a 2021 Washington Post-Schar School study found that as many as one-third of Americans under the age of 40 expressed a desire to switch careers in the midst of the global upset caused by the coronavirus. Nearly 33 million Americans have quit their jobs since the spring of 2021 in what the media has dubbed “The Great Resignation.”
“Many people told The Post that the pandemic altered how they think about what is important in life and their careers,” noted the study’s findings. “It has given them a heightened understanding that life is short and that now is the time to make the changes they have long dreamed of. The result is a great reassessment of work, as Americans fundamentally reimagine their relationships to their jobs.”
In that way, then, for Rios, Fountain, Amber Holley, and Kayleigh Hughes — the members of T2’s flagship class of apprenticeships — this new program came at a perfect time. But T2’s Director of Education Chad Dike says it wasn’t the pandemic that drove the timing. This is something T2 has been hoping to do for quite some time — finally made possible by a grant from the Tyson Family Foundation, matched by generous individual donors.
“It’s specifically focused on under-represented voices — that’s in the grant language, and that’s also deeply tied to the reason the apprenticeship program was [conceived],” says Dike, who says it was T2’s General Manager Shannon Jones who first raised the idea of reaching out to that community.
“One of the best ways we can make an impact as an organization is to build a population of traditionally underrepresented theater makers,” notes Jones. “In launching an early career, BIPOC-focused apprentice program, we can not only provide opportunities, we can also strengthen our core of professional artists in Northwest Arkansas. Also, whether someone stays on with us here, or whether they move on to other opportunities in the field, we're staying true not only to our mission of broadening access, we're also helping to educate and cultivate future leaders in the American theater. Building that base at our theater and here in Northwest Arkansas can have a great impact, and also helps us to learn about ourselves as an organization and how we want to advance our community.”
“ A major component of that is building up their skills and then also looking at what’s next — spending the last two months of this apprenticeship, while they’re still doing work, getting their resumes in order, working on interview job skills and connecting them with our connections throughout the whole country,” adds Dike.
In its current iteration, the program lasts a little over four months — future sessions will be nine months — and apprentices are matched with departments in which they’ve expressed interest.
“We spent the fall really working with department heads, and then at the manager level, thinking about what this apprenticeship should look like,” says Dike. “We spent a lot of time developing those ideas.”
“So instead of it being really general — we're getting a sort of a theater 101 in this first week, but then they’re really going to get to focus in on their chosen specialties, spend a lot of time in their departments, and have very specific personal projects that they get to pursue,” adds Emily Tomlinson, T2 Education Specialist.
Tomlinson was a beneficiary from T2’s early experimentation in internships, before a formal program existed. She’s been working for T2 in one capacity or another since she was in high school, lending her a personalized lens through which she manages the program.
“To get that hands-on experience instead of it all being theoretical or from a book or from what you read on the internet about ‘how a theater works’ — to actually get to be in the space and see how a show goes from the script to the stage, knowing it’s not just about the actors, and it’s not just about those directors, it’s [about] all of the designers, it’s all of the front of house people, it’s all of those development people who are talking to donors and raising that money,” she says. “Because we can’t just make it happen from scratch. Seeing all of the problem solving and creative solutions — that’s huge.”
Holley, a 2020 graduate of the theater department at Indiana University Northwest, is apprenticing with the T2 stage management team, and agrees that just being in the environment has been beneficial.
“The people here all know so much that you just want to sit there and pick everybody’s brain,” they say. “On top of the actors and directors being from other places, everybody here has a story, and they are so willing to tell you about where they’ve come from and what they know. I think that’s lovely and, from my experience, unique.”
Holley says that the level of responsibility they have been afforded so far has given them valuable real-world experience.
“When Tiger Style! opens, I’ll be working on that for a few weeks, and then with [the next show] ‘The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity’, I’ll be taking more of a hands-on approach,” Holley says. “I’ll be leading things instead of taking more of an Assistant Stage Management position.”
Although Holley’s focus has been squarely on stage management, they say there have also been opportunities to work with other departments to get a feel for other areas of the theater ecosystem.
“It comforts me that, even though I’m working with stage management, that I could still go and work in the scene shop, or if they needed help hanging lights, I could do that. Everybody is still coming together in this collaborative way to make sure that the show goes on. If you want to learn a new skill, you can. If you want to use what you already know, you can do that too. It’s a good time.”
Hughes, who is working in the marketing department, has taken on a potentially large-scale project of her own in collaboration with Joanna Sheehan Bell, T2 Director of Marketing.
“I’m engaging with the University [of Arkansas] — that’s naturally what I gravitate towards because that’s where I lived for four years,” says the recent UA graduate, who studied marketing and communications. “We've recognized that we have a lot of opportunities for ad placement there. So I've gotten to figure out some kind of deals we might be doing with the [student newspaper] The Traveler, ad placement on the University campus, and how to get the students here. What are they interested in? That’s a cool spot for me, where I have the most knowledge — how a student thinks — so I can kind of lead that project.”
Hughes says one of the biggest benefits of the program is allowing her to “try on” a job to see if it’s a good match.
“I’m figuring out right now if this is what I want to do,” she notes. “I wanted to do this to put myself in a learning environment that was structured, in order to give myself an opportunity to do something here and get a better idea of whether or not it’s the right fit.”
All four apprentices emphasized the degree to which T2 has worked to tailor the program to their particular needs in order to help them grow.
“I came in asking Chad, ‘What are your goals for me [to accomplish for TheatreSquared]?’ because I had that corporate mindset,” says Fountain. “And Chad and Emily said, ‘Okay, yes, we have goals for you, but this apprenticeship is about helping you find your path. So what are your goals for us?’ They are helping me dig in, and research.”
“This is a place where people are not trying to compete with you but are actually trying to help you, which is really hard to find in this day and age because I feel like people are always trying to climb over one another to get to the top of the mountain,” says Rios. “But here, if anything, they would give you a hand getting up there. That's the thing that I really do applaud this theater for, as well as the apprenticeship program. Everyone is there to actively, legitimately help me and try to make me a better person and even telling me about different opportunities I can pursue after the apprenticeship.”
For Fountain, the opportunity has been even more personal.
“Big thanks to TheatreSquared for this opportunity — I say this especially as a person of color,” he says. “It is such a struggle. Because there's still so much judgment out there, and I appreciate an organization that is working hard to be diverse and accepting and kind — that's so important in this world we live in.”