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.

“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.”

“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.”

While Benoit was at the Shaw Festival he worked on Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Human Heart directed by Craig Hall, and Candida directed by Severn Thompson. Benoit interned under both directors for six weeks and attended all rehearsals during that period. He was able to be part of both productions from their very first day and experienced everything from the first read-through, rigorous table-work, staging, stage combat choreography, and much more. His experience granted him the opportunity to interview members of the Shaw ensemble one-on-one such as actors Damien Atkins and Sochi Fried, where Benoit could ask all his burning questions about what it’s like to be a working actor. Not only was Benoit able to shadow actors and directors, he was also able to follow stage manager Leigh McClymont and have weekly meetings with Associate Artistic Director Kimberly Rampersad. Being at the Shaw opened many doors for Benoit which will be integral to his career in theatre moving forward.

“I put my education to the test while at the Shaw. I got to see the concepts that I had been taught in numerous classes work together implicitly through the shared knowledge of everyone working on the production.”

“By working on a show by George Bernard Shaw, I appreciated my training in language and voice. I was able to go along the journey of discovering what the text truly meant with the other company members because of classes I took with Brock.”

Dramatic Arts (DART) student Ava Robitaille was selected for an internship at the Shaw Festival for the 2023 season, allowing her to dive deeper into directing and add to her growing list of skills. Ava worked on The Clearing directed by Jessica Carmichael and The Amen Corner directed by Kimberley Rampersad.

“My time at the Shaw Festival has now come to a close, and while I am sad it’s over, I am inspired. I have learned so many things from my short eight weeks that I am confident will make me a better director. I’ve compiled it into a short list:”

1. Treat your script as a musical score. A wise piece of advice I received from Kimberley during one of our meetings. I set out on this internship to learn how to incorporate my voice into my directing, and I strongly believe this piece of advice will help me achieve that.
2. Details make the space feel alive. I have always been a very detail-oriented director, but seeing how the small details Kimberley and Jessica add to their shows demonstrated to me why those details are important. Especially since they make the worlds feel real and not manufactured/staged.
3. Text analysis makes the world go round. Jessica’s main advice to me was to make sure that both the directors and the actors have a deep understanding of the text. I saw firsthand in both rehearsal rooms how a deep understanding of the text assists in creating a phenomenal show, and the way to achieve that is through text analysis.
4. Influences from other art forms are important. Theatre does not need to only be inspired by other theatre allow your love for music, movies, visual arts, and dance to inspire your work. Both shows I worked on had heavy influences from other art forms, and it allowed the creative team and actors to be inspired and better informed.
5. Female directors rock!!