Cheyenne Bates’ father taught her early on never to say, “I can’t.” If something was hard, he helped her shift from “can’t” to “can”, going so far as disallowing the word. Years later, Cheyenne, a CH-CH alumna from the Class of 2016, has returned to campus in a new role as the Middle School Performing Arts Teaching Fellow, where she’s adapted this lesson for her students. She helps them switch from “can’t” to “I can’t do this… yet.” It’s apt advice, because right now she’s manifesting several things that might not have happened… but only not yet.
For starters, her ten-minute play has just won the Region 1 round of the American College Theatre Festival (ACTF), beating out over 800 submissions regionally to become one of six finalists, and selected from those Regionals to head to the National competition where it came in fourth place. Cheyenne’s script, “Esmerelda”, explores themes of grief and connection in a magical realism setting.
Asked what it felt like to win, she breaks into a smile at the moment of validation. “You know you’re good enough, but you don’t know if others realize," said Cheyenne. "I did something and people actually saw me.”
There’s a lot there to see. Cheyenne had been a theatre kid since middle school, and it was during her time performing at CH-CH that she realized she wanted to focus on behind-the-scenes character development. That’s when her love and skill for playwriting leaped into focus. Although she considers herself shy, she realized that the characters she played were their own people with their own problems: “It was this really cool idea that you could be somebody else.”
Having been diagnosed with OCD and discovering she is neurodivergent at age 8, theatre was always that “safe place to be goofy, the one place you could be yourself and comfortable.” She credits CH-CH theatre directors Michael Spencer and Bekah LaCoste with boosting that confidence, including one literal yell on stage opening night her sophomore year, in a voice she didn’t even know she had. “I remember hearing the audience respond and thinking: I made them feel this way.”
After graduation from CH-CH, Cheyenne chose Wheaton College in Norton, MA - where she double majored in creative writing and theatre - because of playwright-in-residence Charlotte Meehan. Originally unable to secure a spot in Meehan’s playwriting course, she overheard the playwright comment on her submission to a one-minute play competition at Trinity Repertory Company: “This is so well written, I wonder who wrote it,” Meehan mused. Cheyenne tapped her on the shoulder, and needless to say, soon had a spot in the course.
She brought that same determination to an advanced playwriting class at the National Theatre Institute (NTI), which boasts such illustrious alums as Lin-Manuel Miranda. Cheyenne describes the experience as “intense”, a three-month program featuring 15 hour days, 7 days a week. When an instructor seemed to call into question her credentials, Cheyenne went right to the director of the program in defense of herself: “When anyone tells me I don’t work hard, it angers me,” Cheyenne says firmly. “I’m one of the hardest workers I know.” She recalls with pride how she showed up for the next session with 30 pages she’d written in 11 hours, just one example of that work-ethic in action.
She says this ability to defend herself, too, comes largely from her father. “My dad has always said, ‘I’m a wall, come at me.’ So I witnessed that my entire life.” But the other confidence boost came through theatre in general. She thinks fondly on teachers such as Ian MacPhail and Bekah Lacoste with whom she could be “totally genuine… that teacher who sees you for who you truly are,” or her Ms. Honey from ‘Matilda’, as Cheyenne likes to put it.
Her journey back to CH-CH is yet another moment Cheynne seemed to manifest. As she works toward her MFA from Lesley University, the position for a teaching fellow at the middle school opened here, just as she was looking for new opportunities.
(from left) Cheyenne with CH-CH Alumni Emily Arbetter '15, Taylor LaRoche '15, and Nate Jaffe '14. They attended the Winter Musical Production of 'Once Upon a Mattress' and held a Q&A with cast members before the show, sharing life lessons from one generation of theatre kids to the next.
“I love CH-CH,” Cheyenne enthuses. “I thrived here as a student, I love the community. I needed a new space [to work] that was safe and understanding and has really good values.” She smiles again, “They wanted me.”
Now, Cheyenne brings the same curiosity she learned about character development to her role as a teacher and mentor: “I’m better able to understand how a student’s mind works.” When she notices subtle cues that a student might be having an off-day, for example, she’s quick to reach out, and let them know she’s there.
Having now experienced CH-CH through multiple lenses - student, alumna, teacher - the core remains of what Cheyenne loves most. “Chapel Hill was already the biggest believer in multiple intelligences when I was a student, which helped me a lot. I recognized the benefits as an alum, and recommended CH-CH to anyone who would listen to me. I remember sitting in the new faculty meeting where they were talking about CBL [competency based learning], and being so impressed that the mission not only continued but improved. This is the way students should always be supported.”
Cheyenne hasn’t determined what’s next after the teaching fellowship ends, but there is a lot she envisions. Perhaps a playwriting class, a unit on character development, the history of theatre? It’s not that these things can’t happen. They just haven’t happened…yet.