be me and bring it to the stage,
and that would be enough. I could
bring myself to any character.”
Michelle said Brandeis Univer-
sity was looking for a black male
to complete a fine-arts graduate
class: “Dr. Stewart said, ‘I have
a black male for you,’ and she
slipped them a tape of me per-
forming. I didn’t know anything
about it. I got a full scholarship to
go to graduate school.”
Michelle said that at the universi-
ties, which practiced “color-blind”
casting, she was accustomed to
playing leading ladies. When she
moved to New York after earning
her master’s degree, she wasn’t of-
fered those roles.
“I had a great agent,” she re-
called, “who said, ‘You keep com-
plaining about roles. What do you
want? Why don’t you write that—
maybe that doesn’t exist yet.”
Michelle said she shied away
from doing that for many years,
but more recently, reflecting on
the body of her work, she decided
she had to start writing the stories
she wanted to tell.
Listen to “I Put A Spell On You” by Nina Simone
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 55
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