Performers are always working hard to hone their craft and striving for the seemingly impossible claim of mastery. For some, they seek the ability to act and perfectly portray a character. For others, it’s singing in a manner where they hit all the notes just right; or dancing without fail and creating captivating images with their body movements alone.
While many performers would be happy laying claim to just one of the three, junior theatre major Ashley Brown is aiming for the entire “triple threat.”
Brown’s performance history began when she was just two years old with dance. As a child, she practiced competitive dance, went to competitions and did “all of the dance world things.”
“I remember I was like, ‘I’m going to go to school for dance…I’m going to be a professional dancer,” she said.
Then, Brown took a drama class in her freshman year of high school where her teacher convinced her to audition for Footloose.
“So I auditioned for it,” Brown said, “and they said, ‘You have to sing.’ and I said, ‘I have to sing? In front of people?’…and then I fell in love with it.”
Following this performance, she realized from that point onwards, she could not just have dance without singing or theatre. Through the rest of high school, Brown dedicated the first half to theatre and fell deeper in love with the art before balancing it with competitive dance in her latter half. This led to her choice of musical theatre as her focus in college, allowing her to study all of her passions under one umbrella.
Brown begun with a snag her first semester at Winthrop University in the form of a broken leg, but she did not let this stop her. Instead, she got into working behind the scenes of productions, something she had also dabbled with in high school. She also still auditioned for shows, just to gain experience.
“I was like, ‘Hi, I’m auditioning for the musical because I want the experience of auditioning… But I cannot be cast and I just want you to know that I know that because I can’t walk…And [the director] told me that that…showed how passionate I was about it, because even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to do those things, I was still pushing myself to go out and try and get the experience and learn from it.”
Once her leg healed, Brown wasted no time getting into Winthrop productions and has since starred in The Vagina Monologues in her freshman year, A Circular Play, A Play in Circles and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her sophomore year and Women of Lockerbie in the first semester of her junior year. She also choreographed one of the Fall 2020 One Acts.
“I had always been cast throughout high school as the comic relief character or a male.”
Her performances at Winthrop allowed her to experience more abstract and serious roles, in turn showing her that she could do more than she originally thought on stage.
“[Women of Lockerbie] showed that I could go from Circles, which was super, super out there, and super comical and super abstract, to this really really serious, emotionally draining show,” Brown said. “I think that Winthrop offered me the chance to show this range of emotions that have helped me grow and I really appreciate that from the school.”
Brown is also involved on campus as the current president of “Improv This!”, a club that meets weekly for an hour and a half of de-stressing entertainment in the form of improv games that have participants create scenes in the moment with little to no supporting material. She said her favorite part about the position is “bringing joy and bringing happiness to these people and giving them a space where they can just feel so open. I’ve had members tell me, ‘I really look forward to this on Thursdays because sometimes it’s like just what I need when I’m having like a rough week’ or ‘It’s something I look forward to.’ And being able to create a space where people can feel that is so amazing.”
When asked what drives her to perform, Brown explained that dancing, and later theatre, was like an escape. She said, “When you dance, your body can move in ways that you don’t get to move in natural living and you get to express your feelings through emotion and the creation of a piece.”
She also said that she just loves doing it.
“I just love being on stage,” she said, “and giving people something that makes them happy. When people go to a show, I want them to leave happy.”
Despite the unpredictable nature of theatre in the current state of the world, Brown is continuing to perform. Currently, she is involved in one of Winthrop’s upcoming productions, Hear Our Voices: Shining a Light on Diversity. Brown has a starring role and said that the show is a “collection of songs from different musicals and a couple that are not…strung together to make a cohesive story…about diversity, acceptance, how someone is always there for you, equality, and a lot of the
things that are going on in the world right now.”
“Improv This!” meets Thursdays from at 10:30 pm with SignUpGenius sign ups for in-person in Johnson J103 or via Zoom through the link found on the club’s Instagram, @wuimprovethis.
Hear Our Voices: Shining a Light on Diversity opens Feb. 18 and runs through Feb. 20 at 7:30 pm and Feb. 21 at 2 pm. Tickets for the show are available on ShowTix4U.com.
Photo by Wren Brooke
