Chemeketa Voices

Sharing Stories:
Gabrielle Brewer-Wallin

If she hadn’t been such a pushover for free candy, Gabrielle Brewer-Wallin might have had a very different life.

She was 9 years old, sitting in the back of a room reading a book while her mother auditioned for a part in Wait Until Dark when the director asked the elder Brewer if her daughter would like to read for the play. It was about the furthest thing from the young girl’s mind, until he offered her a candy bar.

“I was so mad at my mom. She promised I wouldn’t have to do that, but I loved it,” said Brewer-Wallin.

She got a part in the production, her mother didn’t. Being the only child in the play only drove her to seek out other acting opportunities. All the grown-ups doted on her.

“I just sort of kept acting. I loved the social part of it,” she said.

Over time, though, she grew less enamored with the notion of a glorious life on the stage. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Lewis & Clark College in Portland and found a job teaching at a local high school. It wasn’t until after she’d taken the job that the other facets of theater production began to appeal to her, and even that wasn’t what she’d planned. She’d been determined to keep her head down, teach her classes and go home.

“I knew what a crazy amount of time was involved with theater productions, and I just didn’t want to put that kind of time into my job,” she said.

As she began making friends with other teachers at the school, she let it slip that she had background in theater and, when it came time to sign on with the school for another year, the stipulations in her contract suddenly included heading up a drama club and directing a play. She’d liked her job, so she signed.

Brewer-Wallin didn’t even get to choose the play. The powers that decided such things chose The Miracle Worker for her first production, one might guess as a test of her mettle and a sign of their faith in her abilities. Brewer-Wallin was so humbled by work of bringing it all together that she ended up pulling off a stellar production.

Along the way, she discovered it was fun. The next year she directed two plays. Her third year she directed three plays and started teaching theater classes. Soon she was teaching more theater classes than English classes, and found that, instead of wanting to teach English and go home, the time she spent teaching English only passed the hours till she could get back to directing.

“Days became a countdown to rehearsal,” she said.

About that time, Brewer-Wallin decided to return to school for a master’s degree in fine arts, with an emphasis on directing. As an anniversary gift, Brewer-Wallin’s husband, Bobby, encouraged her to apply to the top five schools she was interested in and, if she was accepted, they would move. While searching through her stacks of admissions packets, Bobby, a costume designer, decided to start applying as well.  They both ended up accepting spaces at the California Institute of the Arts in L.A.

Brewer-Wallin found out she’d been accepted to graduate school in March, and learned she was pregnant April.

“It was intense, but I was able to bring my daughter with me around campus. It was some of the best years and some of the hardest,” she said.

They stayed in L.A. for four years, but didn’t want to raise their daughter there.  After graduation both Brewer-Wallin and her husband wanted to teach. Together they decided that the first job they were offered would decide their next move.

“We we’re sending out applications everywhere, even though we were hoping some of them wouldn’t call,” she said.

When Willamette University called her husband, they couldn’t have been more relieved.

“We’d never thought we’d be able to come back to the Pacific Northwest. A month later, I got a call from Lewis & Clark offering me a position as a one-year replacement,” she said.

Brewer-Wallin followed up her one-year placement at Lewis & Clark with a stint substituting at Catlin Gabel in Portland. From there, she went to Woodburn High School where she set up another theater department and helped establish an arts and communication program at the school.

When she learned that Chemeketa was planning to reinvigorate its theater program in 2007, she was hesitant to start all over again, but knowing the area and having the right experience were two traits that would help her succeed and she couldn’t ignore the prospect.

“Between working in Woodburn and the contacts I’ve got at Willamette, I’ve been able to establish Chemeketa’s program as a conduit for theater students from the high school level to the college level,” she said.

She had three criteria when planning her first year of Chemeketa theater: She wanted to engage the community; provide examples of theater that stretched the actors creatively and the audience intellectually; and to assist in the creation of dialogue throughout the community.

At the time, the one topic she knew everyone had an opinion on was war. She scheduled two full productions, in fall and spring, and a series of five play readings during winter term.

“It ended up being a great way to look at the same issue from seven different angles,” she said. “I was especially appreciative of the response to the readings.”

The blessing and curse of theater productions is that they’ll never be reproduced exactly the same way twice. Try to capture them on video tape and the results are boring or disjointed as the camera worker tries to figure out where to put the focus. Still photos can’t capture the life an actor can breathe into a role. Audio recordings only retell half the story.

With the play readings, Brewer-Wallin set out to sustain the feeling of live theater for as long as she possibly could.

“When I see powerful theater, which is different from good theater, I don’t want to leave. I want someone to bring me a glass of wine, put all the chairs in a circle and talk it out,” she said.

Since walking out of a theater breaks that connection, Brewer-Wallin upped the ante. She asked the audience to stick around for after-the-show discussion moderated by a Chemeketa instructor. The experiment turned into a huge success. Primarily because it wasn’t only the instructors bringing the best of themselves to the conversation, the audience did, too.

“We had one audience member ask an actor how it felt to portray a truly heinous human being. Those sorts of questions lead to fantastic places,” she said.

Brewer-Wallin maintains the firm belief that the only way to heal the world is to share our stories, if an audience member leaves the theater inspired to tell their story or a family member’s, she’ll consider her mission accomplished.

“I want people to talk. I want them to go out into the world and tell a story,” she said.

Updated November 12, 2008 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.