Melina Young at the Fountain Theatre.
by Melina Drake Young
Hi.
My name is Melina Drake Young and I’m the new Development Intern at the Fountain Theatre. This is supposed to be a chatty-get-to-know-me kind of piece, so let’s chat and get to know—well—me. I would say each other, but since this isn’t a real conversation I can’t, so I didn’t.
Relax. Take off your shoes.
Pour yourself a glass of Rosé.
Did you do it?
Me neither. I’m at work. But it’s nice to pretend.
That’s what I like to spend my time doing—playing pretend. Since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to be a pretend-player—a storyteller—so naturally I wound up in The Theatre. (I hope you read that to yourself in the voice of Katherine Hepburn because that’s exactly how I hear it in my head.)
I’m an actress and writer (a rare bird in Los Angeles, California?) and a (VERY) recent graduate of Bard College’s Theatre & Performance and Literature programs. I was born in Silver Lake just before it became Silver Lake. And I think I liked it a little bit more when the neighborhood wasn’t italicized. What I mean is, LA is my home. Oh mother LA, how I love you. When I was studying in the Hudson Valley, I would often identify LA in movies (as one does) by its light. It’s golden, warm, heavenly, distinctly-LA light.
I’m thrilled to return to it and to re-discover LA’s artistic vibrancy as a young adult. How lucky am I to be starting my theatrical career at the Fountain?
A typical day in the life at the Fountain Theatre for this Development Intern includes time spent discussing theatre, organizing, crafting surveys, writing, chatting with co-workers, and being dazzled and moved by the students participating in Walking the Beat . Created and led by Angie Karoitis and Theo Perkins in Elizabethville, New Jersey, Walking the Beat is new to the Fountain and new to me. The program seeks to create a discourse between and eventually a performance devised by and starring ten remarkable students from LA high schools and LAPD officers.
Melina guides students through paperwork at the orientation for Walking the Beat.
Before my time at the Fountain, I would like to say that you’d have found me traipsing around the beautiful Hudson Valley, but the truth is more likely than not I was in rehearsal. If I wasn’t, I was writing at my desk.
This is still true.
The setting, however, has changed.
TIME: The present.
LOCATION: 5060 Fountain Ave, Los Angeles, CA.
CAST OF CHARACTERS: A blonde 20-something who doesn’t like to be identified as such. She wears glasses sometimes. Her eyes are myopic, but she isn’t. She’s grateful to be where she is and she hopes that you can tell.
The Fountain Theatre thanks the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the LA County Arts Internship Program.
