Barnard College Newscenter

Mercedes Montagnes
Intern in Action, November 2003
Intern for Project 400's production of The Karaoke Show

Barnard junior Mercedes Montagnes, an Urban Studies major, considers one of the most important aspects of theater to be how the performers connect with the audience. Most of the time, she means this abstractly, not literally. But this summer, as part of Barnard’s Social Kauffman Entrepreneur Internship Program, Montagnes became an Associate Producer for The Karaoke Show, an interactive interpretation of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors set in a karaoke lounge. From the same creators of The Donkey Show, an interactive all-singing version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream told through 70’s disco hits, the show completely breaks down the fourth wall.

It’s the kind of theater Montagnes thinks can revitalize the theater community, exactly because the people performing live connect so closely with the audience. The producers at Project 400, who staged the production of The Karaoke Show this summer, quickly noticed her enthusiasm for the show and her hard work ethic. And, although she began as an intern, over the course of eleven weeks, she handled a staggering number of jobs —from fundraising and payroll to ticketing, promotion and program production, to arranging for catering and staffing the house. And then when it came time to print the program, they listed her as what she’d become: an Associate Producer.

"I learned so many things while working at my theater company that it is hard to narrow my experience down to a few skills," Montagnes says.

The Social KEIP has been funded for the past two years by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, which has also funded 2 other entrepreneurial programs at the college. This Program’s specific goal is to provide the growing entrepreneurial savvy of Barnard interns to support NYC cultural institutions whose survival was in question following the events of 9/11. At Barnard, the Social KEIP matches each student with a not-for-profit theater or dance company and provides a stipend of $3,100 for the 3-month summer internship, to which the company must provide a $100 contribution.

The summer internship is the first component of the Social KEIP to help students develop an understanding of and skills appropriate for entrepreneurship in the arts. The hands-on work is supplemented with workshops on topics like development and marketing and the following semester, the student receives an academic credit for an independent study. Each student writes a report on her experiences and analyzes the organization’s sustainability. In the 2 years of the Social KEIP at Barnard, 16 students have participated. Twenty-four other Interns or Fellows have been funded in additional Kauffman projects which have provided at a minimum a summer stipend of $3,000.

As an urban studies major, Montagnes seems, at first glance, an unusual candidate for the program. But she has a long-standing love of the arts, having attended a performing arts high school in Toronto, and even starting a small production company there in her sophomore year. Her goal was always to become an actress, but her focus has changed in recent years to the production and business sides of theater, with an emphasis on theater as a vehicle for social change.

"Theatre is an integral vehicle for social change, building community and collective healing," she says, noting, for instance, in the year following the September 11 attacks, theater became an important avenue for expressing the many emotions of the New York City community. "The beauty of live theater is that the people performing live make direct contact with the audience and they heal together."

She thought that she could best contribute to that kind of theater by going to the business side. "I am interested in being a driving force in the industry and I think that actors are sometimes distanced from those types of roles. I’m interested in making things happen."

She considers the Kaufman internship invaluable for teaching her the kinds of skills she’d need in theater production and business generally. "In the business world, it is so much more about being creative and knowing how to think than it is about being able to quote from financial documents. I learned to trust my instincts and take risks. You cannot change the world by adhering to the status quo."

After graduation, Montagnes plans to pursue more theater production work. "I have to try it now that I’ve had such fun with it. See where it takes me."

Click here to see past Interns in Action.

If you would like to be featured as the Barnard Intern in Action please send an email to Cara Smith, Internship Program Coordinator, at csmith@barnard.edu. Indicate where you are interning, what you are doing, and why you would like to be considered.