Cindy's Summer Internship
Using a professional theatre inventory site, I sampled 100 undergraduate internships for their provision of stipends and housing for their interns. These were the results:
When stipends were available, these ranged from $50-$200 per week. However, the majority of internships offering stipends did not specify the amount of this stipend, presumably so that this amount could be adjusted to match the qualifications of the applicant.
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Very few internship opportunities offered housing, especially in acting "hotspots" such as Hollywood and New York City. Many companies also specified that they would not validate or provide parking. Some companies required that interns purchase meal plans.
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These sites also characteristically employed a rhetoric which assimilated internships with volunteer positions.
Twenty of the sampled internships in this sample offered college credit in exchange for students' work. Some companies offered this as an alternative to payment-- and explicitly included that providing credit was their preference.
Twenty of the sampled internships in this sample offered college credit in exchange for students' work. Some companies offered this as an alternative to payment-- and explicitly included that providing credit was their preference.
Most available positions centered around technical and administrative rather than performance work.
Perhaps most strikingly, many (about one-fifth of my sample) had tuition costs. These ranged from $150 to thousands of dollars for one summer "semester."