"Romeo & Juliet"--The Internship Begins

When I met with Vickie for the first meeting, she mentioned that "Romeo & Juliet" was the play for the month of February.  She said that I could write the article for it.  As soon as she mentioned me writing it, I remembered the all-important phrase I learned from Dr. Gouge's Editing class: "do you have any previous documents that I could look at to find out the normal format?"  Vickie directed me to the section of the main website that houses the past articles that have been featured in the Dominion Post during the last theatre season.  I asked her to get me contacts for each show so that I would be able to start as soon as I got them.  She jotted down the note, and we concluded the meeting.

Leaving her office, I knew that I wouldn't be able to start writing the article until I had an understanding of what a press release entailed.  I had a general understanding, of course, but I had never actually written one.  I Googled the term and found lots of examples.  The structure seemed to be quite strict, which I had already gathered from Vickie--she said that she wants my articles to be articles and not just press releases.  She wants them to be creative and fun to read.  I then went on the M.T. Pockets' website and found the previous releases.  The format for this one seemed pretty rigorous, too, but I used it as my example to begin writing.

I took notes on the format of the example; and I noticed that, like any good newspaper article, it explained the show concisely to the reader.  I began to get worried--how does one explain the plot of "Romeo & Juliet" without giving away the ending to the world-renowned play?  I used several websites dedicated to the play in order to get an idea of the basics of the show.  I played around with several renditions of the plot, and quickly came up with a way to explain it without giving it completely away.

The next step in the writing process was to talk to the director.  It took a while to get the actual contact info for her from Vickie.  I quickly emailed the director, Ariel, asking to attend a rehearsal to interview her and observe what she was currently doing with the play.  After the interview and rehearsal, I still had questions for Ariel about the play.  Because there was a week in which to put together the article, I emailed her and waited for her response.  Ariel, unfortunately, lived in a part of Morgantown that lost power during the large snowstorm.  She had no way to get back to me with the queries until the night after I had to submit the article.  Working with what I had, I finished the article and submitted it to Vickie.

She had asked for it by noon that Monday, and I had it to her by 1:30 pm--I was rather frustrated with the entire process because I did not know until that Saturday that I was supposed to submit the article on Monday.  I need to be able to have a due date for each article, and I did not have that for this first one.

Because some time has passed since this occurred, I have since gotten a list of articles and due dates that includes contact information.  That is for another blog post, though.