[SML] Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival Fwd: Campus Closed This Weekend

[Bill Conner]

What Kristi said. It wasn't greed that caused this.

And as to we know better now, probably tops for me was building a scenic
fireplace out of asbestos furnace cement. It was terrific material for
molding into rocks.

Bill Conner Fellow of the ASTC

On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, 11:14 PM Kristi R-C via Stagecraft <
stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:

> I don’t believe the FLSA is new since the 90s - Perhaps Richard can answer
> that for us.
>
> What happened is enough folks figured out they were victims of wage theft
> and started to spread the word. Let’s be honest, minimum wage isn’t that
> much anywhere in the country and that’s ALL it takes to not be an “intern.”
>
> #6 here talks about interns and what they can do. Fact Sheet #71:
> Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act
> <https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships>
>
> Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act
>
> Wage and Hour Division Fact Sheet - U.S. Department of Labor
> <https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships>
>
> The material handling rule is: if the object is longer or taller than you
> are tall, you need qualified, competent help moving it. An intern by
> definition is studying to be that, but isn’t yet. I dearly, with all my
> momma/teacher heart hope the intern involved with this is getting the
> mental health support she needs and deserves.
>
> As for the rest - there were many things I did in my younger days because
> no one had educated me that it was unsafe or just plain stupid. It could
> have been me instead of Kat, but when the workbox started tipping onto me
> as we were four-corner hand-carrying it up two flights of stairs, we had
> enough bodies to be able to grab it before I was crushed.
>
> Our arena riggers would shimmy out on a beam and tie a rope around their
> waist then to the beam “so if I fall the rope will catch me” and a lot of
> folks did that until Bill Sapsis designed affordable fall arrest/prevention
> things specifically for our needs and taught us why the old way was 100%
> wrong.
>
> We know better now, so we do better now. We can’t defend “we’ve always
> done it this way” anymore. We’ve seen too many people hurt, careers ended
> and loved ones killed from that attitude.
>
> Any entity using “interns” as the majority of their summer technical
> theater staff is going to be in the wrong. If you can’t afford to do it
> right, don’t do it.
>
> Kristi RC
>
>
> On Friday, August 8, 2025, 03:36:16 PM CDT, William Knapp via Stagecraft <
> stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:
>
> [BIG SNIP BY KRISTI TO GET TO THE RELEVANT PART]|
>
> *About intern staff.*
>
> As I understand it, interns are meant to work *alongside* professional
> staff, not replace them. I’m not a labor lawyer, and I haven’t read the law
> directly, but that’s my understanding. As we all know, the practice in
> summer theaters is that interns work right next to professionals.
>
> I know Jacob’s Pillow has changed a lot in recent years to comply with
> evolving labor laws. But when I was there in the 1990s, there was a
> supervising staff — and *all* crew positions were filled by interns.
> Those were gentler times, mostly "lights and tights" production. Many
> interns were dancers who had realized, through injury or other
> circumstances, that they would never dance professionally but still wanted
> to be in the dance world.
>
> We’d have about a dozen interns. During the initial setup period, we’d
> train them in stagecraft. Over the season, they’d rotate through all the
> production positions — board ops, wardrobe, APMs, flys. It was on-the-job
> training, and if you paid attention, you left with a marketable skill set.
> Many connected with companies that came through and went straight from The
> Pillow to touring work.
>
> It was, a bit, like a theater program at a school with an associated
> professional theater, learning meant doing — except at The Pillow you got a
> stipend and worked with your heroes. Experiences varied, of course, but the
> vast majority of people I’ve met who spent time there remember it
> fondly, hard as the work was.
>
> That model doesn’t align with today’s legal definitions of internships;
> the staff situation at The Pillow has professionalized considerably since.
> But to suggest that this nonprofit dance festival is just another example
> of a craven capitalist producer cutting corners to save a buck isn’t
> accurate either.
>
>
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