Brooke Hall’s stare portrayals stand in stark contrast to her scholarly roles as researcher, psychology teacher, mentor and counselor to future medical professionals.
Or do they?
“It’s curiosity,” Hall says of the common denominator linking the seemingly diverse pursuits. “Acting is about people’s motivations – how they think about things and why they do the things they do. Psychology is a lot about that too. The interesting thing is not only collecting the data, but also in seeing what happens – in seeing life and why things are the way they are. I’m just curious about things in general.”
Hall made another stage appearance at Lamar summer commencement Aug. 13, receiving a round of applause as she walked to the podium of the Montagne Center to accept her master’s degree in community psychology.
A 1999 graduate of Humble High School, Hall earned a degree in speech communication with a minor in psychology from Texas A&M University in 2003. She “married into Beaumont” the same year. Her husband, Mark, a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, is originally from Orange.
“I really like school, so, when I moved to Beaumont, I decided to go the graduate-school route, and it’s been the most awesome experience,” Hall said. “I can’t say enough about Lamar University and the kind of opportunities I’ve gotten here as a graduate student.”
Hall’s dean, her professors and her colleagues say her contributions to Lamar transcend the classroom. Outside her curriculum, she has worked for the past three years as a graduate student assistant in the College of Arts and Sciences. She has worn many hats – all of them a perfect fit, says Dean Brenda Nichols.
At 24, Hall has traveled internationally, attended prestigious conferences, helped shape the JASON project, along the way organizing campus lectures by the likes of columnist Molly Ivins. This fall, she began teaching psychology classes at Lamar.
When Hall arrived on campus to pursue her master’s degree, Nichols said, “She immediately started working in the dean’s office and quickly became invaluable, helping with all kinds of tasks big and small.”
She later took on the job of advising pre-professional (pre-medical, pre-dental and pre-pharmacy) students as her primary job. “She was great for the students and their family members – encouraging them, working with them and learning more and more about options for graduate study,” Nichols said. “This year, she began working with our students on probation and suspension – with excellent results.”
Hall also has worked closely with Jim Westgate, former associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and now professor of earth and space sciences.
“Dean Nichols and Dr. Westgate create the most supportive, wonderful working environment, and they have let me have a lot more responsibility than the typical graduate student,” she said.
Even as a child, all the world was a stage for young Brooke Elaine Pearson.
“I was getting into my mom’s high heels and putting on big hats and playing dress-up and doing shows for my parents’ company for as long as I can remember,” she says.
Her parents, Jeanette and Steve Pearson, a librarian and a geologist, respectively, moved from Humble to Denver about the time she and Mark married.
Throughout her school years, Hall was involved in swimming and water polo, as well as speech tournaments and theater. In eighth grade, she landed the role of Shelby in Steel Magnolias, made memorable by Julia Roberts on film and by Hall in the Kingwood Center Stage production.
Her most interesting role – and her favorite until her recently – was that of Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace at Humble High School. That’s right. The psycho brother portrayed on the Broadway stage by Boris Karloff.
“Basically, I am really, really tall. I was taller than all the boys in high school and still am taller than most guys – 6 feet 1, flat footed. So I went to audition, and the only women parts were the two little old ladies and the girlfriend. I really didn’t know if I would get cast in any of those parts. Then the director made me read for Jonathan Brewster.
“So I read. Apparently I had a deeper voice than some of the men, and he cast me in the part. I put on these thick shoes to be even taller and padded my shoulders, wore a wig and scarred my face with make-up. I had to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas over and over to get those inflections down. I had to learn how to smoke a cigar.”
Her first performance for Beaumont Community Players – as Suzette in Don’t Dress for Dinner – earned her a Sallye award as the BCP’s best actress of 2004.
But the role that would finally upstage Jonathan Brewster was that of the repressed, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive perfectionist Maude Mix in John Ford Noonan’s challenging two-person play A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, co-starring Rachel Cain and directed by Gina Hinson.
“That was the most amazing production I’ve ever been a part of,” Hall said. “My character is trying to keep everything around her perfect so she doesn’t have to deal with the fact her life is really falling apart. Into her very wealthy neighborhood in moves Hannah Mae Bindler (Cain), who is this loud-mouthed, crazy Texan, every stereotype you can think of. The two women who are total opposites end up becoming friends. Hannah Mae is the catalyst to let Maude break free.
“It was so hard. In a two-person show, when you have to interact for two hours, you know that if somebody says a line and you don’t hear anything back, it’s your line. But lines were never a problem, and we really had a good time – and a lot of chemistry to take it to a level you don’t get to do when you have a big cast.”
Now a member of the BCP board, Hall is part of efforts to make the troupe’s downtown theater a reality. “I’ve been trying to branch out and meet people,” she said. “I’ve made a lot of friends at the university, but I was trying to make Beaumont my community too.”
Through Westgate, she became involved in the JASON project. “It’s an incredible program that really brings in a lot of community.”
She and Westgate recently traveled to Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, Mexico, a top international medical school, to further pre-professional relationships and recruitment. “It was an amazing cultural experience.” She’s attended conferences of the Texas Association of Advisors for the Health Professions and visited medical schools in and around the state.
Lamar’s pre-professional programs have come light years in a short time, through new relationships with medical, dental and pharmacy schools. “It’s exciting to have seen the growth in the three years I’ve been here,” Hall said. “These are such wonderful recruiting tools. The first thing I tell students is how proud they should be that they’re at Lamar because of the hands-on teaching and many undergraduate research opportunities.”
Her master’s thesis, “Narcissism, Self- Esteem and Aggression,” achieved significant results, she said, and she is now working with her thesis chair, Joanne Lindoerfer, to revise it for publication. “That’s my goal next year,” Hall said. “I want to continue being involved in research because I hope to get a Ph.D. and become a professor.”
Lindoerfer, associate professor of psychology and a 25-year faculty member, has high praise for her student. “I believe the whole department thinks of her as one of the most positive, most enthusiastic students we’ve ever had,” Lindoerfer said. “She’s also bright, a good researcher and writer and a good therapist.”
Hall looks forward to her continued relationship with Lamar.
“I love it, and the reason I love it so much is that I have gotten a chance to do so many different things,” she said. “I can do research. I can work with faculty members. I can work with students. I’m always doing something.”
