Vikki (centre) with some of the cast members at the end of a rehearsal for which she was asked to step in and read for the leading lady of the show, Angel, played by Virgilia Griffith.

Dramatic Arts senior student Victoria Marshall was the DART Intern at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake for 2025. The Department has partnered with the Shaw Festival to provide internships to graduating students since 2011. Internships focus on diverse aspects of production at the Festival including performance, design, technical production, directing, arts management and education. Throughout the program, individuals will receive integrated exposure to the scope of the Shaw experience. This year the five-week paid internship began a full-time intensive schedule in early May, 2025

Victoria Marshall, 2025 Shaw Festival Intern.

Vikki shadowed Associate Artistic Director Kimberley Rampersad as she directed Blues for an Alabama Sky for the Shaw Festival’s 2025 season. During the rehearsals Vikki was called upon to read for the leading lady as well as the leading lady’s love interest on separate occasions when the actors were not available. This allowed her to stretch her acting muscles with professionals. The director invited Vikki to share her thoughts and observations with her and the cast during rehearsals. Some of the notes were shared and those suggestions were transformed and integrated into the final blocking for certain scenes and characters.

“I became more confident in my ideas and I learned how to value my voice even more because of the director seeking input from me.”

Vikki also sat in on a production meeting for this show where she met many new faces and also had the pleasure of being reunited with some familiar ones, like Emma Dirks who created the wigs for Blues for an Alabama Sky and taught the makeup course in the winter semester for DART this year (“which was an awesome class”) and Chris Malkowski who was the lighting designer for this show and has been the lighting designer for all of the mainstages she has done at Brock.

She also participated in the Thursday morning ensemble classes taught by Tim Carroll (Artistic Director for the Shaw Festival) and attended by all members of the Shaw Festival. She toured the scene and set shops and worked one-on-one with actors to help them with line memorization and discussing the world of the play or their character arcs.

“Through this internship I learned a lot about myself, the kind of artist I am, and the kind of working artist I can become in the future. I went in as an actor, but over those 6 weeks, I studied as a director and actor.”

Vikki (in white) with company members in the Shaw Festival scene shop.

From the first table read of Blues for an Alabama Sky to meticulously blocking out the whole play, Vikki witnessed the brilliant work by the incredible cast and crew of this production. “Kimberley took me under her wing and made me feel right at home both at the main Festival Theatre and in the rehearsal hall as I became a member of the Blues family. I learned so much about the individual creative process and just how different every actor is when they work in the space and take on their character arc. The company of Blues for an Alabama Sky was a beautiful synergy of diverse representation and creativity with an all-Black cast and a majority female production team which Kimberley affectionately called “team lady leadership.”

“Working in a room full of folks like me, doing what I hope I will be doing after my time in the DART program at Brock was truly enriching. They did not shy away from including me from the jump and making me a part of the company.”

Vikki highly recommends that future students of DART seek out the opportunity to participate in the DART Shaw Festival Internship. Graduating students and students entering 4th year are all eligible to apply. Part participants have completed their terms at Shaw in the diverse fields of Stage Management, Lighting Design, Props Building, Directing, Dramaturgy, Production and Design and Audience and Community Engagement. “This internship opened my eyes to so much and gave me unforgettable moments and lasting relationships. This has been such an enriching experience and I am looking forward to what the future holds for me. It is sad to see it come to an end, but I know that this is not the last the Shaw Festival will see of me!”