Spotlight on... Sheyenne Brown '09

Author: Emma Stanford

In her senior theater project, Sheyenne Brown '09 is confronting the issue of race at Middlebury College. Brown, a theater major from New York City, has attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., as well as Middlebury. This weekend, she takes on the ultimate challenge of theater: performing her own one-woman show.

The Middlebury Campus: So tell me about this project.

Sheyenne Brown: This project is my senior work for theater. It's called "A Colored Girl's College Tour." It's a one-woman show that I've written and will be acting in next week. It's a show that's semi-autobiographical and it's about my journey as an African-American woman at Middlebury College and at Spelman College, trying to find my voice in terms of what that means being at each of these institutions. Middlebury is a top-tier school that's predominantly white, while Spelman College is a historically black college. It's about how both affected me when I got back home to NYC. I'm a changed person, and that has sort of created who I am right now.

TC: When you were planning this show, did you have a specific idea of what it would be like? Did that idea change as you went on?

SB: This show has changed so much. When I proposed it last March it was supposed to be a show based on interviews that I conducted with other women of color and I was going to be completely removed from it. I conducted so many interviews and for some reason it wasn't clicking. I talked to my advisor and we couldn't figure out how to make it work. Towards the end of last semester we decided, what if you make it about your experience and include these other women along the way? So it became a hybrid. I have some interviews included in the show, but it's sort of from my perspective. The writing has been extremely hard because of the person I am as a writer. You know, you write very beautifully and all these descriptive sentences and then when it's time to perform it, that doesn't work. This has sort of been a growing-up process as an artist.

TC: Did doing this project help you deal with your own experiences?

SB: It did. It helped me to process. This is not just my senior project; it's like closure for me. It wasn't necessarily an easy four years, and I've included a lot of incidents that have happened at schools that are specifically pertinent to race and how I've never really processed it. I thought back then, when I was dealing with it, that I was doing something about it. But in reflection it's like, wow, I was really avoiding this.

TC: Do you think your show will help other Middlebury students deal with race?

SB: I do, you know. I feel like if people don't receive it well at least they'll be more educated about it. There are a lot of times when people just don't know what's going on. It's not that they're turning a blind eye or indifferent, they just have no idea. I feel like the way my show is performed is not an attack, it's like, "Look what I went through and I want you to hear about it, and if it changes you in any way, that's for the better."

TC: How well do you think Middlebury handles issues of race and minorities?

SB: That is a very good question. I would say it needs improvement. I'm not sure what else to say because a lot of times the burden is on the student body or the cultural organizations to try to educate other people or to figure out why something is happening, and I'm not sure how the institution can step in and intervene without seeming like too authoritative of a figure. It's been something that I've been trying to figure out. It's a really tough question given that Middlebury's sort of small but spread-out, and things never seem as big as they should be. There are things I've come across as isolated incidents but it's really happening fairly frequently. Every semester there's some sort of racial incident, and I guess that's to be expected, but it's treated as if it's not a big deal and I feel like sometimes it should be.

TC: So, you're a theater major. Where are you planning to take that in life?

SB: I have not quite decided yet. I hope to perform later on in life, but I know immediately after graduation I'll be teaching English in middle schools in Newark, N.J., through Teach For America. Maybe after that I may want to start performing and start getting into acting. If my show is so relevant, somehow, maybe I'll just do it again outside of Middlebury College.

TC: Do you think the current economy makes it hard to find work in theater?

SB: I wouldn't say that, necessarily. Just in my experience with theater majors or being at a liberal arts college in general, we have all these majors and not too many are preparing us for a specific track. Theater majors are sort of prepared for anything because we have that experience performing. But this economy's terrible for anyone right now.

TC: Do you have a message that you would like for people to take away from your performance?

SB: Don't be afraid to speak out when you're uncomfortable, or speak out on someone else's behalf if you're uncomfortable for them. Explore what it is that keeps you from doing it, figure it out for yourself and act on how you feel you should proceed. Saying something is always better than not opening your mouth at all. If you don't talk, how will people know?

A Colored Girl's College Tour will run Thursday, March 5, through Saturday, March 7, at 8 p.m. at 51 Main on the Bridge.