The question of Internships

Looking at this post by Scott Walters (Theatre Ideas: Class, Geography, and Internships), I can't help but notice the relevance here. I'm in the process of applying for several internships, including one at the Actors Theatre of Louisville (which does not pay or house their interns) and another at Milwaukee Rep which pays maybe 75$ a week, and so I worry constantly about how I'm going to support myself if I manage to snag one of these positions. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely take one of these internships if it were offered. The allure of having an internship at such a prestigious theatre is extremely powerful. But I think he's right in the sense that there's a problem here.

The problem lies with the notion that young artists are expected to support themselves in these positions after having just spent four years of their lives paying out the ass to receive a degree which grants them the ability to claim that they are educated theatre students (which is often not the case at all). The degree does not get your foot in the door, does not help you in getting a job or getting cast (at least not all that often), but it does seem necessary to have a degree in order to be recognized as *legitimate* in the theatre world, especially as a director.

Of course, you can't just do what is suggested in the post at TheatreIdeas, because the moment you take these unpaid or lowly paid internships and use legislation to require them to pay at least minimum wage, the internship pool will dry up. Many of the companies offering these internships could not afford to continue doing so if they were required to pay their interns more. As a student, and someone who is trying to find a way in to the business, I really don't want that to happen.

I'm not sure what the third option is at the moment, and because I can't thing of a better alternative at this point (other than hoping for federal funding in the US along the lines of that which exists in Europe), I'd say that I hope that this legislation never comes to fruition. I'd rather these opportunities exist than not, and so despite the problems with the current system, I'm not sure that there's a better viable option.