2021 UWAA Rising Alumni Awardee: Anne Mason

September 10, 2021
head photo of a woman
Anne Mason (Photo by Rose Curtis)

By Jeff Victor 

The University of Wyoming has been ever-present in Anne Mason’s life—from her years as an elementary student at the UW Lab School to the interdisciplinary partnerships she now maintains through Relative Theatrics.

Mason earned the UW Alumni Association’s Rising Alumni Award for 2021, alongside Tiffany Young. The award recognizes recent graduates who have distinguished themselves in their professional careers.

“I’m filled with a wave of gratitude by the selection,” says Mason, the founder of Relative Theatrics. “It’s validation of all the hard work I’ve put in over the last decade to really build up an arts community in Laramie.”

When she graduated high school, UW stood apart from the larger “name-brand” schools that are so attractive to young actors seeking theater degrees.

“I realized they were all very densely populated programs with a lot of clout attached to them but not actually a lot of investment in the individual students,” Mason says.

It seemed like UW would be different, and it was.

“It was everything I dreamed that it would be,” Mason says. “One-on-one tutelage, great focus and training from my professors, and I left school with a stacked resume of performance opportunities.”

But after graduation, Mason went the way of many young people, believing she had to leave Wyoming to chase opportunities and advance professionally.

“That’s the narrative I had grown to believe,” she says. “Even though I loved Laramie and was sad to leave, that’s what I did.”

But Mason’s experiences beyond Wyoming eventually brought her back.

She toured for a year with Missoula Children’s Theater, directing and performing in big cities and small towns alike.

“Small towns were really rewarding, because it was bringing the arts to a community that maybe only got an artistic or cultural outlet once a year when Missoula Children’s Theater came through town,” Mason says. “And in those moments, I realized how valuable it is to have arts in rural areas—to have access to arts, culture, and humanities in places that hadn’t had that before.”

A year in Sacramento and an apprenticeship with the Capital Stage Company gave her experience with contemporary theater.

“Rather than just providing entertainment, it was really about engaging with the work, grappling with the ideas, questioning, starting discussions,” she says. “I thought, this is theater that belongs in Laramie, and I don’t understand how my hometown—this community of thinkers—has never had something like this.”

She brought these experiences back to Laramie, originally just for the summer of 2013. But she soon launched Relative Theatrics, bringing that necessary contemporary and challenging theater to a town that would otherwise lack it.

Since then, the organization has grown and now hosts several performances a year, providing an artistic outlet for local performers and a venue for thoughtful engagement for the community.

“I owe so much of that to the connections and the partnerships with the university that I have been fortunate enough to cultivate,” Mason says. “Whether that’s academic programs with the Honors College or with the students who are theater majors, UW has been there every step of the way.”

 

 

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Institutional Communications
Bureau of Mines Building, Room 137
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Phone: (307) 766-2929
Email: cbaldwin@uwyo.edu


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