Stage, film, television, academia. Stan Brown has accomplished many goals in his life, but he didn’t make it to Broadway until age 61.

“I accidentally became the poster senior for never giving up,” the performer told Free Times from his home in Chicago via email. “It caught me off guard at first when it would come up in interviews but I thought, ‘Just go with it!’ So many people reached out and told me it inspired them to get back into acting and to keep trying. I thought that was wonderful.”

A University of South Carolina alumnus and former faculty member, Brown recently finished a nearly nine month run at New York City’s Imperial Theatre in the musical “Water for Elephants,” which was nominated for seven Tony Awards. Brown portrayed Camel, an aging circus veteran who befriends and is later cared for by the protagonist.

“I did find myself clarifying several times that I didn't just wake up on my couch last year and decide to do Broadway, and that I'd had a lovely and fulfilling career doing exactly what I wanted to do," Brown said. "I will always be deeply grateful for the opportunity to work on Broadway, (but) being in my 60’s kept me grounded in the reality that it was a job like any other acting job, and I had to do my best just as I would anywhere else.”

Growing up in South Carolina

Growing up in Harleyville, a Dorchester County town about an hour west of Charleston, Brown excelled in school. It was the expectation in a family of educators, musicians and preachers.

“Even so, I was never unaware of what it meant to be an African-American child in the rural South,” he recalled.

He experienced firsthand the conditions that dubbed his community part of the "Corridor of Shame," a moniker used to describe the impoverished Interstate 95 corridor in South Carolina, where some of the worst education systems in the country persist.

“Escaping or even avoiding that stigma wasn’t a choice," Brown said. "Racism wasn’t just present — it was part of my education, woven into the way I learned to navigate the world then and now."

At USC, he sort of stumbled into theater. The department's building was close to his Preston Hall dorm room. Brown realized he felt “at home in myself like I never had before.”

Around the time he began work on a graduate degree in acting, Brown became a regular performer at the original Assembly Street location of Trustus Theatre, even briefly living backstage while between apartments.

The first artist — other than the late Jim Thigpen — to direct at Trustus, he helmed a production of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” with co-founders Kay and Jim Thigpen in the title roles. He counts performances in shows such as “Ain't Misbehavin,’" “I'm Not Rappaport” and “The Boys Next Door” from that era among career acting favorites.

“I can't tell you how many times while doing ‘Water for Elephants’ I heard Jim Thigpen reminding me to ‘just take a step up every night, kiddo,’ and to ‘NEVER let the audience pull your strings!’ " Brown recalled. "Jim and Kay (Thigpen) and Trustus are part of who I am and what I do in this world. I owe them more than I could ever repay.”

In the early 1990s, Brown was accepted into a post-graduate studies program at Warwick University in Coventry, England. The price tag might have presented an insurmountable obstacle, but Columbia colleagues stepped in to help, including Hollywood star Robby Benson, then a visiting professor at USC, and his wife Karla DeVito.

His community hosted a "big fundraiser" at Trustus Theatre to help send Brown across the pond. DeVito and Brown sang a duet from Benson's film, "Modern Love," one of many performances Columbia artists put on that night. Thirty years later, the memory of that night "still overwhelms me with emotion," Brown said.

"It was one of the most generous acts I've ever witnessed. Columbia wanted me to succeed," he said. "It's one of the reasons I have found my way back so many times during my life. Columbia is just home.”

'All the world's a stage'

A chance encounter on a train in London with director, vocal coach and future mentor Cicely Berry led to working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Next came a thriving career that included appearances in television series such as “In the Heat of the Night” and “I’ll Fly Away," and teaching positions at the University of Nebraska and the National Theatre School of Canada.

In 2013, Brown returned to USC as a full professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Then came a dream job offer to become the Inaugural W. Rockwell Wirtz Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of the MFA in Acting program at Northwestern University.

“I wasn't looking for a job,” Brown remembered, “but, as I tell my students, if ‘they’ call ‘you,’ at least take the meeting. It was a combination of the right time and the right opportunity, so I took the leap.”

Northwestern’s faculty includes many working actors who maintain careers in the profession, he explained, “so they know the drill when it comes to being away to do gigs."

His leave to perform in "Water for Elephants" was considered professional development, Brown said.

This musical adaptation of Sara Gruen’s best-selling 2006 coming-of-age novel had been in development for eight years. Brown was invited to participate in a workshop of the show in 2022. That preceded an out-of-town tryout production at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre a year later. "Water for Elephants" premiered on Broadway on March 20, 2024.

A number of former castmates and colleagues from Columbia made the trek to New York City to see their friend perform, an experience Brown described as “absolute joy."

"I cried more tears of joy last year than any year in my life, and it began with that first group from Columbia," he said.

His friends' presence meant a lot to him, especially since his family was unable to travel to see him perform.

"That for me — and it's making me tear up now — was the best part of the experience," he said. "I don't know if I can describe it. It was the mountaintop.”