Madeline Sayet

Madeline earned her BFA in theater at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts before enrolling Gallatin, where she studied art, politics, and post-colonial theory. “I was looking for an academic outlet to pursue the creative and intellectual coursework that there wasn't room for in my undergraduate training,” she says. “I especially needed a framework within which to articulate the issues surrounding the representation of the indigenous body onstage.”

She performed in Gallatin’s all-female 2010 production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, directed by Gallatin faculty member Kristin Horton. She co-founded the Mad and Merry Theatre Company, a collaborative company of Gallatin students and alumni, for which she now serves as the artistic director. Her thesis project was a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which she examined the New World elements of the play.

Madeline received the White House Champion of Change Award for Native American Youth, for her work as a writer, director, performer, and educator. “Only Gallatin would encourage students to be all four,” she says. “Theater cannot be created if everyone in the company only does one thing, but a company of Gallatin students means that everyone is constantly excited to dive into things from a new angle.”