WIFE, MOTHER, ACTRESS

Bronwyn McEwen returns to the stage after 32 years

In 1990, when she was 25, Bronwyn McEwen enrolled at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as a theatre major.

She quit nine months later to marry Warren McEwen. Their daughter Mary Catherine was born four years later.

“I had two major goals in life,” she says. “The biggest was to be a wife and a mom, and the second was to be an actor.”

Acting never left her mind during motherhood, though, and in spring semester 2022—32 years after she left college and at the age of 57—she returned to UTC to finish her degree as a theatre major.

Then came her first acting role, ever. She played The Nurse in the UTC Department of Performing Arts, Theatre Division’s fall 2022 production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

“I just feel privileged to have this be my first experience,” she says.

Anne Swedberg, associate professor in the theatre division, has been McEwen’s instructor for three courses—Acting 1, Theatre History 1 and Voice and Body. Having McEwen as a student has been “a great pleasure,” she says.

“She is curious, eager to learn as much as possible and enthusiastic about everything she undertakes,” Swedberg says.

Undertaking acting seems a natural fit for McEwen, who is almost electric in her energy level—whether talking about her past, present or future.

Although being a wife and mother was No. 1 on her goal list, the acting bug came first. In 1982, months after graduating from Chattanooga Christian School, she spent 11 months searching for fame and fortune in Los Angeles.

“I was young and naïve, and I thought, ‘I’m just gonna show up over there and they’re going to say, ‘Oh yes, we want you.’”

No one says that, but she did win a car on “The Price Is Right.”

Dejected, she returned to Chattanooga. Five years later, despite feeling too old for college, she enrolled as a theatre major at UTC.

A semester and a half into her college career, she met—or re-met, actually—Warren McEwen. They first met the year before in a Bible study for singles in a friend’s home but didn’t click, she says.

“In fact, we had zero interest in each other.”

A career accountant and now a lecturer in the Department of Accounting in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business, McEwen earned an MBA at UTC in 2018.

Along with her husband, her second daughter—also named Bronwyn—graduated with a business administration degree from UTC in 2018. Their youngest son, Jack, received a bachelor’s in finance at UTC in December 2022.

Will, their oldest son, earned bachelor’s degrees from the College of Charleston in finance and economics. Daughter Mary Catherine is on schedule to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology from an online university in spring.

As for Bronwyn McEwen—the mom—she aims to graduate in 2026 and has concrete plans beyond that.

“The goal isn’t to just have fun here in school and get my degree, which is important,” she says, “but the whole goal of it is to learn how to act and then be able to audition for things.

“I don’t want to be 70 when I graduate.”