<p>snapdragonfly, </p>
<p>I think your question involves two different types of things. This thread was talking about summer stock, which is atypical for a high school graduate and more about what COLLEGE students MIGHT do in the summer (or even college grads).</p>
<p>To answer what summer stock is…it is professional theaters that tend to present their production season only in summer, although some actually also produce shows during other seasons of the year (the summer stock my D after freshmen year of college was at a theater that did shows besides in summers). Summer stock may be Equity or non-Equity houses and then at some Equity theaters, the college aged actors get non-Equity positions (may sometimes even be referred to as interns) and at some of these, they can earn Equity points and at a handful of them, they may be given an Equity contract. Some summer stock theaters have well known Equity actors as leads and college aged actors as part of the cast. Some summer stock theaters (particularly the non-Equity kind) cast entirely of college aged actors. A lot of summer stock is made up of young adult actors and is considered one way to gain professional experience while still in college. The rate of pay varies from negligible stipends to Equity pay. Some summer stock theaters will house the actors at no fee and some also feed them. There is great variation. Many summer theaters (but not all) participate in large “unified/combined” type auditions such as Straw Hats in NYC, NETC in Boston, SETC or MWTA where many theaters attend and cast many young actors for the season, and others hold independent auditions on site or in places like NYC. A summer stock season can run from May to Sept. approximately and a theater may put on many different shows during that period. A summer stock theater may hire a resident company for the entire season or cast each show separately. </p>
<p>In any case, this is not really something that your D would be doing THIS coming summer as a HS graduate, though I suppose some do. It is not that common for a HS graduate to be part of the combined summer stock auditions such as StrawHats and it really is too late to look to apply to these (which you have to do just to get an opportunity to audition). This is more something your D might want to look into once she is IN college.</p>
<p>My comments above about doing other things in the summer was referring to the summers during the COLLEGE years, just to clarify. </p>
<p>I will just share my personal experiences regarding the summer after HS graduation, as well as college summers, for my MT kid, but these are ONLY one example and not nearly representative of the options out there. In our case, we were not willing to pay for our kids’ summers once they were out of high school and our kids opted to live away from home in the summers every summer in college and so their jobs, which were in their fields, had to pay enough to cover their living expenses away from home. I realize some send their kids to summer programs even while in college and so there are some nice summer programs you could look into, but my kids never did that. We had sent them to summer programs for years up to HS graduation.</p>
<p>My D…summer after high school, we made ONE exception to what I wrote above. It was only because our D was still 16 after she graduated from high school (early graduate) and she knew we had still sent older D to summer programs when age 16 (before HER senior year), even though we expected our kids to earn money the summer after graduation to supplement their spending money in college. So, actually my MT D did go back for 3 weeks to her beloved summer theater camp out of state (her 8th summer), but had gone for 6 weeks all her previous summers. As it turned out, we are glad we let her because after this plan was already in place that winter, my D was in a very bad car accident immediately following her final college audition and had very serious injuries including being in ICU and surgery and a long recuperation being bed ridden and so on. She was out of all her final performances in high school such as she had been rehearsing as lead in the school musical which she was then out of, and she was out of her final dance performances culminating all her years at her dance studio and so forth, and so when she returned to the stage at her summer theater camp, it was like a return to “life” for her. So, she did that and then returned home and was in a professional theater’s musical locally (summer only) which was paid. Then, to earn more money, she and one other MT friend initiated and organized their own summer MT program for kids ages 9-14 locally for two weeks and they rented a theater, directed the program, taught the classes, and wrote a musical revue show that the students put on and they made a lot of money from tuition. </p>
<p>As far as what your D can do THIS summer…there are many possibilities! One consideration is if you expect her to earn money to take to college. If not, she could attend a summer program in MT. She can stay home and audition for local theater…professional or community theater. She can continue training locally with voice, dance, acting. If there is a children’s theater program, perhaps she can work at that. She could get a non-theater related job and save some money for spending money in college. My kids had gone away every summer while growing up and also every summer in college and so the summer between HS and college, we preferred that they were mostly here, and working locally so we could be with them one last time and also so they could save up money. Everyone has a different situation.</p>
<p>But my earlier post that you are referring to had to do with summers while IN college. I was simply saying that while summer stock is GREAT as an experience during the college summers, it is not the only experience one can do in the field during the summer, even though I find many CCers are heavy on the summer stock thing as a “must.” My D did do summer stock her first college summer (after first year) and is glad she had that experience. She had auditioned at StrawHats. She lived all summer in another state and worked at a small Equity theater and was housed there and had her car there. She was only 17 at the time. She has many friends who have worked at many different summer theaters, and these have varied a great deal.</p>
<p>But I have to say that my D and many of her peers at NYU, chose to spend their summers right in NYC and so the rest of my D’s college summers, she did just that. During the school year, the BFA program is all encompassing and so living and working in theater over the summer in the city was great fun. But she had to make money to make it work. Some do unpaid internships with a theater company or a casting company (my niece is in a BFA program and has interned at a casting agency in LA, for example). My D didn’t do that but just mentioning it. Her second college summer, she was an accompanist for the Tisch summer MT precollege program, was in a musical Off Off Broadway in NYC, and did some other contracted work for a professional faculty member preparing for a new work of hers my D was musically directing that fall. Those were the main things if I can recall. The following summer, my D was paid and given free housing/food as both the musical director and MT singer/actor/writer for the whole summer for an original musical revue show at NYU. She did that job the following summer as well, but chose to just be the musical director, not performer. By that point, she was already cast in a national tour that was to start that fall. Since her home base is NYC year round, she was doing other things in summers in addition to these money earning jobs, working on various endeavors such as her singer/songwriter career with gigs in the city at clubs and putting on other shows such as her own original musical that last summer as well, and being in a showcase in that city that summer too. She had several things going on at once in the city (kinda like she does now that she is out of college!). Many of her friends also stayed in NYC over the summer and were in shows in the city and other jobs in the field, and some just worked out of the field to earn money, while maybe also doing some unpaid performance gigs as well. </p>
<p>Hope this helps. I can’t answer your questions about what is available in your home area, however.</p>
and even if she’d sucked it up and gone she’d have done badly - one thing she can’t really do is push through when she has a fever. Well, I think that must not have been meant to be, either.</p>