Watch: Shermona Mitchell

“I think at least some of the art you make should scare you,” says actress and director Shermona Mitchell. “Whether it’s the subject matter, a particular scene, or a choreography, there has to be something in there that makes your heart beat in a way that feels like you, Dear Lord, don't let me fade away.

She laughs. That's how you know you're risking something, that's how you know you're growing.

On a recent spring day, Mitchell and a group of actors slowly filtered into a bright studio at the Seattle Center Armory, chatting as they took their seats around a giant table for their first reading of 53% ofa satire of Steph Del Rosso, which Mitchell directed in June 2024 for Sound Theatre Company.

The play castigates white women, taking its name from the percentage of them who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Mitchell, who uses she/her pronouns, watched the six actors as they read their scripts, playing first conservative women, then their husbands, then progressive white women. She laughed softly at the ridiculousness of the material, taking notes.

Mitchell’s journey to this venue has taken two decades of risk and reward. One of Seattle’s leading actresses, she has appeared in shows produced by ACT, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Intiman Theatre and others. Along the way, she has played a wide range of characters, from eldest daughter Lillian to multigenerational family drama Stew to the Pregnant Chorus in an adaptation of Euripedes' tragedy Trojan women. She's a scene-stealer, adept at embodying a range of emotions and the complex inner workings of her characters with a unique blend of humor and drama.

Since 2015, however, Mitchell's work with the social justice-minded Sound Theater Company has been at the forefront: There, she directs plays like Repairs, a science fiction story exploring how trauma is passed down through generations. She has performed in productions like Citizen: An American Songan adaptation of Claudia Rankine's powerful meditation on race in America. She currently serves as the company's co-artistic director and served as its board chair from 2021 to 2022, becoming the first Black woman to do so.

Mitchell's story begins far from the Pacific Northwest, in Fort Gordon, Georgia, where she was born in 1982. Both of her parents served in the military, and as such, she had an itinerant childhood, moving through the Midwest, to South Korea and finally landing in South Korea. Kentucky. The idea of ​​acting came to her mind as a child, while watching a community production of A Christmas Carol at Fort Knox; she thought, I could do better.

It wasn't until a teacher at her high school encouraged her to read a monologue that she actually put the idea into practice.

[The teacher] She had auditions for a drama club and she was like, Hey, you come here, Mitchell recalls. She asked me to read a monologue and said: Read this and make me laugh. So I read it. And then she said: Read this and make me cry. And I read it. Then she said, “OK, you come back to this class at this time tomorrow,” Mitchell said. So I did it.

It was from there that Mitchell’s love of theater blossomed. She came to Seattle to study at Cornish College of the Arts, where she graduated in 2005 with a BFA in theater. She dove headfirst into the Seattle scene, landing her first acting gigs within five minutes of each other.

One of these two roles, Esmeralda in a production by Tennessee Williams Highway staged by Theatre Simple, did not quite live up to its own expectations.

“I got horrible reviews. It was wonderful,” she said. “I didn’t die, I didn’t faint, I didn’t fight. It was one of those moments where when you get to the top, you imagine you’re going to stay on top and you’re not prepared for what the descent might be like. When you’re already at the bottom, you can only go up.”

Mitchell has come a long way since then. She has received rave reviews for her performances, most notably for her portrayal of the commodified black artist Balkona in Theatre22's 2019 production. White. (NW Theater wrote that the role combined her strengths in over-the-top, over-the-top humor, alongside irony, insight, and steely seriousness.) She also won two Gregory Awards for her performances in The last days of Judas Iscariot in 2016 and Citizen: an American word in 2019.

In the eyes of his peers, the praise and recognition are well deserved. [Mitchell] “brings a vitality and a liveliness to whatever character she plays and is so fully into whatever character she plays, you forget you’re watching Shermona,” says actress Rebecca Davis, who met Mitchell in the early 2000s and has appeared alongside her in various plays. “She knows how to tell us a story, whether it’s with a flick of her finger or a full scene. She’s very adaptable and she’s also mesmerizing to watch, you can’t take your eyes off her. Whoever’s on stage with Shermona better bring their A-game.”

In 2012, Mitchell began her directing career in earnest, participating in Pipeline at the Seattle Public Theater and The beauty and the Beast And The Sorcerer For her, the achievement is the culmination of her hard work and the care her community gives her. It's also an investment in a future where more directors will look like him.

A lot of people invested in me and made sure I gained the knowledge they have. A number of people have actually said to me: Hey, we see you doing this and we'd like to encourage you. I was also very tired of being told what to do and how to be black by white people, Mitchell reflects. I shouldn't plow the soil. I should plant seeds.