During Women’s History Month in 2018, the OUT LOUD musical theatre group, led by University of Rhode Island alumna Kira Hawkridge, showcased photos of performances from their past six seasons, performing at the URI Feinstein Providence Campus, written by former Good Five Cent Cigar reporter Theresa Brown.
OUT LOUD’s showcase was one of the many galleries put on monthly for 17 years on the URI Providence Campus, by Founder and President of Gallery Night, Steve Pennell. The idea for OUT LOUD’s gallery was celebrating Women’s History Month by showcasing young women’s voices and their thoughts on society.
The photographer was Justine M. Johnson, who worked for Piquant Photo. Johnson worked closely with OUT LOUD, photographing every performance leading up to the showcase. The photos included plays such as “Antigone,” “Dracula,” “Coriolanus,” “Jane Eyre” and “King Lear.”
Brown wrote the article when she was a first-year student and contributing reporter at The Cigar. During Brown’s time at The Cigar, she wrote almost 100 articles.
At the beginning of Brown’s four years at URI, she started as a nursing major. After her first semester, she found that she did not like her classes.
“I realized really quickly that, like, blood and the sight of it, like makes me pass out, but what I did enjoy was being part of the newspaper,” Brown said.
Brown’s orientation leader, Emma Gautheir ’18, who was The Cigar editor-in-chief at the time, encouraged her to join meetings. She was unsure about it at first, but she ended up liking it.
“The [Good Five Cent Cigar] was everything to me,” Brown said. “It was like, to be honest, like more important to me than my classes were.”
During Brown’s four years, she started as a contributing reporter for her first year, then moved to web editor for the fall semester of her second year. In the spring semester for her second year, she became managing editor into her third year. After, she moved up to editor-in chief from her spring semester of her third year into her fourth year. In her last semester, she went back to writing.
“I think beyond just writing, and learning how to write an article, you learn so much about how to communicate,” Brown said. “How do you get answers and get information that isn’t readily available?”
As a writer, Brown reported in every section, primarily news, but she wrote for sports because she enjoyed sitting in on basketball games. She also enjoyed arts and culture and writing opinion columns.
“I really liked investigative journalism, and there was a group of three of us that we called the Cigar Light,” Brown said. “We did hard hitting stories and that was what really got me into journalism.”
The other Cigar Light members were Ian Weiner, the editor-in-chief before her, Julia Morrow and Andy Main, the two news editors, according to Brown.
As a former journalist who did freelance and internships, and a female working in journalism, it can be easy to get people to open up and answer questions, but not necessarily be taken seriously and underestimated, according to Brown. Now working in book publishing for Simon & Schuster, her team is all women. While she works with some men, women dominate her workplace.
At Simon & Schuster, Brown works in digital and online sales, running their TikTok shop presenting titles to clients. The clients decide how much inventory they want for each book for the shop.
“So it’s a lot of sales forecasting, but yeah, after URI, I went to NYU for two years to get my graduate degree in book publishing, and then I ended up where I am.” Brown said.
