In my first official meeting with Jon Cook to become an
intern here, he explained what the MAC is and what is done here. Amid the
children’s painting classes, local band concerts, and BalletMet taught tap, he
mentioned Art Off the Square, an arts administration internship the MAC offers.
When he told me that they give a small group of
high-schoolers a budget to create their own programming once a month, I
was sold on this place. Maybe I’ve spent too much of my life on Facebook, but
I’ve never heard of an internship like this and thought it was way cool it
existed.
Art Off the Square is my favorite program to
tell my friends, family, and fellow bus riders about, when they ask me about my
internship. “I intern at an arts center that is totally engaging our youth!”
(Is 22 old enough to start using the phrase “our youth”?)
However, I had yet to attend any of their programs.
Fearing I’d start to look like one of those people who always wear band
t-shirts for bands they’ve only heard on the radio, I decided the next third
Sunday of the month I had free, I would go.
That was last Sunday.
Three of the five interns hosted a laid-back, and at points
musical, theatre improv group. I was fifteen minutes late, (I had no idea where
they were meeting, maybe something to advertise on the website AOS peeps.) but walking in, I
found a decent sized group, maybe twenty, of high school, middle school,
elementary school students, and even some parents, in the basement dance
studio.
Let me just say, I’m incredibly bad at improv. I am a goofy,
fun-loving person, but acting scares me. Too much pressure to be funny, or
believable, and yet--I did enjoy myself. Some of the early games reminded me of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" (For the record, one of the interns had never heard of Whose Line, I almost freaked out.) In the game two people read from the page of a play and the other person was suppose to respond to it, in their situation in a way that made sense. That's not at all what happened, but it was interesting to watch none-the-less.
After that, we played a handful of games similar
to charades and then apparently an Improv staple, “Honey, I Love You.” In which
one person has to walk up to someone and make them laugh or smile by asking the
question “Honey do you love me?”
The most successful “Honeys” were the ones willing to cut loose,
or who knew their friends really well. One of the girls sang pop songs off key
to get the person to crack a smile. Some of the participants were just really
good at not smiling, which was a double-edged sword because if they didn’t make
you smile, you had to walk around trying to make someone laugh.
After that game they played a similar one, where everyone but
one person lies on the ground with their eyes open, pretending to be dead,
while one person tries to make them smile or laugh and once someone laughs
they’re no longer dead and help make other “dead people” laugh. The event kind
of dismantled into groups of friends singing pop songs (I call them “pop songs”
because I didn’t recognize some of them. So yes, 22 is old enough to start saying
“our youth.”)
Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, myself included. Afterwards I talked to Delany and Angie, two of the interns that set up the
event, they said they were happy with it. When I asked them why they chose this event and what they hoped participates would get out of it, Delany replied, “I just like being completely weird and hoped people would break out of their shell and have fun.” Angie explained they thought it would be a fun,
laid-back way to get their friends involved with Art Off the Square and it was
their best turn out yet.
They both agreed this is an event they’ll host again. Next time
I’ll commit to being a little weirder.
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