Meet Grace McLean! Performer. Composer. Theatre Writer.
Exciting up-and-coming theatre artist Grace McLean talks about her work with Natasha Sinha (artistic producer and dramaturg), as she prepares for her Lincoln Center American Songbook concert on April 1st, and the concert of songs from her new original pop opera at Greenwich House on May 5th.
NATASHA SINHA: Up until now, you’ve been primarily known as a musical theatre performer in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, Brooklynite, and Bedbugs: The Musical. But you also have two upcoming concerts that feature your own songs! Can you talk about how you found your way into theatre and songwriting?
GRACE MCLEAN: I come from a family of musicians, so I was always around music and performing as a kid. But I considered myself a Very Serious Actor, and I went to Orange County High School of the Arts for acting. I was there with a lot of people who are here now. Freakin’ Krysta Rodriguez and I did The Music Man when we were sophomores!
NS: You have such an astonishing voice. As a kid, did you sing a lot, even if you identified as an actor first and foremost?
GM:I didn’t even think of myself as a singer until we had a master class with this jazz singer, Carmen Bradford. My singing teacher was like, “Well, Grace, if we have time for you, you can go last.” I sang, and Carmen was like “WHOA!” I ended up studying with her, and with her mom, Melba Joyce. When I came to NYU, singing and music became more a part of my life. At NYU, a big shaper of my performative voice was being in my acapella group, the N’Harmonics. A lot of really amazing people were there—Kate Ferber, Shaina Taub, Jay Stolar—and it was just us in a room, without anyone telling us what to do or how to do it. We were figuring out how to work together as a group, and also figuring out what our individual voices were. I mean that in a literal and also a “personhood” sense.
NS: And what inspired you to try writing your own songs?
GM: I didn’t start writing until after I graduated, when I was at Williamstown. Williamstown is a really fun and crazy-making place—your world is 200 people big for several months—and you’re around all these creative people constantly. I had brought up a couple of instruments for a new musical where they were thinking about having all of us play. They didn’t end up doing that, but I thought, “Well all these instruments are here now, so I should make use of them.” And I’m a big journaler—I like documenting memories because I’m afraid I’ll forget. So it became sort of an extension of that.
NS: What kind of music excited you and fed into your first forays into songwriting?
GM: I love the ladies! I love the lady songwriters/storytellers. Fiona Apple, Nellie McKay, Regina Spektor, Joni Mitchell. Especially Regina Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch. I was like “What is she DOING?! She’s playing a CHAIR? With a DRUMSTICK? That’s so weird and I LOVE it!” Her weirdness gave me permission to find out what my weirdness was. And I’m very grateful for that.
NS: Definitely a group of awe-inspiring women! Why did you start your band Grace McLean and Them Apples?
ML: My friend was working at Joe’s Pub in 2009 or so and they needed someone to open for this cool band. So we did that, and it was really fun, so we started gigging around. It was good to just figure out how to be in front of a crowd—what works, transitions, all of that very performative stuff you just have to learn onstage. We released our first album in 2012, Make Me Breakfast. And then Natural Disaster was out in 2015. We’re going to release a full-length next year!
NS: An LP, I can’t wait! So what’s your process when you start writing a song?
GM: Since 2012, I’ve been working with a looping station, so that definitely informs a lot of how I write now. It’s this little box that records whatever you put into it, live. And then you can layer it—harmonize with yourself, add a beat, etc. Tommy Smith showed me videos of Reggie Watts working with a looper and I was enamored immediately. It was potentially a cheap way to make music, since you can be a one-man-band. So I eventually bought one for myself, and it has become my instrument. I had been writing very simply on piano, ukulele, and bass—but I found I could do so much more with the looper because I could manipulate my voice in different ways. I like the parameters that the looper gives me. It’s fun to play with those and subvert expectations in the songwriting, because it can be so limiting; it really requires me to figure out how to not be boring.
NS: How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t yet heard it?
GM: Confessional Soul Pop. Because yes, it’s super personal—I definitely write what I know. And that’s about my little heart and the things it desires. We all have that. We all have hearts and desire things. And I want to say “soul pop” because it’s not like folk, wispy, songwritery stuff (although I definitely like that). I find I need to scream a bit more. But also make you tap your foot. Jam a little bit. Shake your booty.
NS: And there’s often some disarming emotional beat that happens as the song progresses, that you don’t even see coming because you’re too busy enjoying the song on a visceral level. Is that something you consciously think about creating?
GM: Oh I’m very much aware of the arc of a song. I want to be able to draw people in and then surprise them with something—take everyone on a little ride! Sometimes I do know that I want to get from Point A to Point B but I’m not always sure how I’m going to get there. But I do know there are some little curves and loopty-loops to take.
NS: These days you’re working on songs for a really exciting musical theatre project, based on an infamous, fierce, medieval polymath over which you and I are initially bonded. In The Green is a pop opera based on Hildegard von Bingen. How did you come to learn about her?
GM: I studied medieval art in college and I’m still a “Casual Medievalist.” One book I read had a bit about this woman who had crazy visions from God. She wrote them down in a couple of volumes of really dense books. It’s a lot of huge crowned women, and then fire coming from the skies covering people’s faces, and then bodies that are covered in eyes, and then like a giant dog-man giving birth to a shit baby. Weird stuff that comes from her and her visions. I was immediately attracted to Hildegard, her intense femininity and her very individual voice. It just resonated with me.
NS: What parts of her life led you to want to write your musical about her?
GM: There are a lot of things about Hildegard that were unheard of for people—and particularly women—in the Middle Ages. She lived to be in her 80s. She wrote books, poetry, music, arguably the first western opera and the first mystery play. And all of this is super feminine in content. She wrote letters to the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. She got away with all this by having the voice of God on her side. See, Hildegard is an anomaly—she’s almost living outside her time, yet she understands the structure of the institution that she’s in (and she loves it and embraces it). So she knows how to manipulate it! She’ll say “I’m a woman” as if she’s saying “I’m the most disgusting thing on earth, Guys-That-I’m-Writing-A-Letter-To, but we know that God uses the most disgusting, lowliest creature as his mouthpiece, so here’s what God has to say: you’re doing everything wrong.” And her justification was “Hey, God said it!”
NS: I still get chills when I talk about her! Such a medieval feminist. Tell us about the part of Hildegard’s story that you’re focusing on with In The Green.
GM: We’re focusing on Hildegard’s incubation period. Until she was in her 40s, she was locked in a church cell with Jutta von Sponheim. Eight-year-old Hildegard was sent there as a tithe by her parents—you’re supposed to give 10% of your earnings to the church, and she was their tenth child. So the church was like “Fantastic, you’re going to be a handmaiden to this ascetic woman who wants to live in a tomb because she’s too holy to participate in this world anymore.” Because when you’re a nun, you’re engaged to Jesus, and when you die, that’s when you meet him. Your whole life is just one long period of waiting around for your groom.
When Jutta dies, Hildegard’s like “Hey can I come out now?” And then she lives this explosively amazing life! So we’re looking at what happened with these two women, who lived together in darkness. There’s this one quote I read about Hildegard about how her life was one whole splendid vision of dying. And I think that’s also true for Jutta. They had the same worldview—but it leads one to kill herself, and the other to create a beautiful life for herself.
NS: If Hildegard were here right now, what would you ask her?
GM: Oh, Hildy! Hmm. I would want to talk to her about Jutta. I would want to know what she did to survive those years in the darkness.
NS: How do you describe the In The Green music in relation to the songs with your band?
GM: They’re sometimes a little bit darker, sometimes a little bit simpler. I’m learning about really simple storytelling with this project. Hildegard herself was a poet so she uses beautiful language, and I too really love metaphors; but I’ve learned that’s okay for an arc that’s three or four minutes, but when it’s ninety minutes, you’ve got to help the audience out. It’s been really useful listening to more from the musical theatre world. To realize “Oh, this is what this moment is” and “How can we delve into that and see how it fits in this larger arc?” It’s a big brain workout.
NS: What will we hear on April 1st and May 5th? What are you excited about?
GM: Oh my god, everything! Grace McLean and Them Apples is performing at Lincoln Center’s Songbook on April 1st—we’re really going to throw a party. There might be a really fun mashup of an old standard with a Beyonce song, a Liz Swados song that we did at a political cabaret together (Liz was a really amazing composer who passed away earlier this year, and I worked with her a lot), some songs from In The Green. And we’re going to make some dreams come true! You even get a little goodie bag.
On May 5th at Greenwich House will be a concert version of In The Green. We’re going to do the whole show in its very, very early form. We’re going to just put it up in front of people, in an order, with some singers, and a band, and see how it goes!
NS: Amazing! Lastly, any other upcoming events of note?
Get ready for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at the Imperial this fall! See you at Greenwich House on 5/5! And check out more at gracemclean.com.
