#Grace McLean

[onewordshy]

Suffs photos are out!

[mossy-rainfrog]

[ID: A traditionally drawn and digitally colored drawing of Fedallah, Starbuck, and Ahab genderbent as women and wearing out-of-era outfits. Fedallah is a lean older middle-aged Persian woman with a light mustache, wearing a Zoroastrian headscarf, a white button down shirt with a black fashion harness belted over her torso. She wears black pants with four brass buttons on each side. She is smiling coyly and standing with her hip slightly cocked. Starbuck is a thin and buff middle aged white woman with short, wavy hair, freckles, and a light mustache. She is wearing a small jean vest over dress pants. The vest shows her stomach, which has a lightly visible happy trail, and the wrappings of a chest binder beneath. Starbuck is standing rigidly with her arms behind her back, looking off neutrally to the side. Ahab is a fat and buff older middle-aged Persian woman with curly graying hair in a bun, and scars over her face and body, including a lightning scar over the left side of her face. She is wearing a tight black dress with a deep v-neck that ties back behind her neck. She is standing with a neutral expression and holding a harpoon in one hand as she looks at the other two women.

Next there are three photos of the live performers: Danielle McKnight, a thin Black woman with shoulder-length curly hair wearing the same outfit as Fedallah without the headscarf, Courtney Basset, a thin white woman with chest-length straight auburn hair wearing the same outfit as Starbuck, and Grace McLean, a thin white woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing the same outfit as Ahab. Danielle sings into a mic with a hand extended, looking sternly down over at Ahab. Courtney sings with a smile, holding her mic to her chest. Grace is not singing, and is combing back her hair with both hands, eyes closed. End ID.]

been having what the kids call an Extremely Normal Time about the concept album Kill The Whale* lately so I decided to draw my butch/genderbent designs of the characters in the outfits their album counterparts wear in the live show. im so fukcign gay 😀👍

*For any who don't know, Kill The Whale is a concept musical album based on MobyDick that genderbends much of the crew! There's a love triangle between Starbuck, Ahab, and Fedallah (with some incredible nuances about Fedallah being exotified/fetishized for her prophecies and then her later taking back control of herself). It is very wlw and fascinatingly composed. However comma there are also Extensive Critiques on this as an adaptation of MD (particularly in reference to racebending and really altering character narratives) so. proceed with awareness! i will be saying more later lol

EDIT: Thank you so much to the folks who caught that I had Danielle's name wrong!!!! I owe you my life!!!! 🙏

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

KILL THE WHALE (LYRICS AND COMMENTARY)

HELLO! Over the past couple of months I have been making it a personal project to transcribe and annotate the lyrics for Daniel Emond's musical adaptation of Moby Dick, called "Kill The Whale".

For those unfamiliar with this album/adaptation, here is the official description of it right from Emond's website:

Kill the Whale is a concept album and live rock opera, built in the characters and waters of Melville's Moby Dick. When Ishmael, a young rocker with an unknown past falls in love with the hiphop harpooner Q, they join Peek-Wow, the Whaleship/Orchestra led by steel-eyed frontwoman Ahab, who sets her crew upon a course to kill the gigantic sperm whale that maimed her, a plan opposed by Ahab's first mate (and secret admirer), the devout and soulful Starbuck. Contending with face-melting squalls and mad mates, the hymnic wonder of whales nursing in the heart of the Ocean, and the poignant Gospel of the castaway cabin kid Pip, Peek-Wow embarks on a rock and roll quest for vengeance. Kill The Whale is memory manifested as a 1970's folk/hiphop/rock opera, that centers two queer romances, lifts voices of color, and re-casts authority roles as women.

The album was released on Spotify in April of this year, with two live performances at Joe's Pub taking place only a few days after it's release.

I have archived and noted the lyrics as they appear in the studio album, the live variation, and Daniel's "official" lyrics as posted to his personal Reddit, and the differences therein. I and my good Melville scholar friend and partner @pocketsizedquasar-2 have also left extensive commentary, notes of context, and criticisms of this album in the document. Please enjoy the fruit of much labor and insanity :)

[mamsellechosette24601]

Haven’t you noticed, by Grace McLean

If when I see you I want to throw up It's just because each time I see you  You crawl in through my corneas And I'm not used to somebody else Swimming round in my blood Swimming round in my blood

If when you touch me I sort of shudder It's just because your fingers feel like my fingers And I'm not used to somebody else As an extension of me As an extension of me

Haven't you noticed we are a mirror We are immersed in each other We are a miracle We are immersed in each other

And I just love the things you're doing to me And I just love the way you've moving through me And I just love the way you wander into my room Looking for me

If when you kiss me I seem paralyzed It's just because each time you kiss me I sort of die And I'm not used to losing myself  And becoming you And becoming you

Haven't you noticed we are a mirror We are immersed in each other We are a miracle We are immersed in each other

And I just love the way you see right through me And I just love the way you're healing through me And I just love the way you're moving through space Lovingly

If when we're sleeping I open my eyes It's just because each time we're sleeping I realize That I'm not used to somebody else Simply being with me Simply being with me

Haven't you noticed we are a mirror We are immersed in each other We are a miracle We are immersed in each other

[someprincecalledarthur]

I came as soon as I heard

[doyouknowthismusical]

[thatvictorian]

ABH sketches

grace mclean saw this and liked it. Heath Saunders also saw them. Im going to faint

[shiningnorthernlights]

AMBER GRAY.

Bad Cinderella Opening Night.

[irreplaceable-ecstasyy]

My Grace McLean enjoyers. Idk where y'all at but please indulge. From her music video, Albertine, she's serving again.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

SUFFS

SUFFS by Shaina Taub, directed by Leigh Silverman, choreographed by Mayte Natalio: My cheeks are still hurting from the almost endless smiling that afflicted me watching SUFFS, and it’s the rare show at which I was whooping at the ends of musical numbers without realizing it. That’s both a testament to Taub’s multiple achievements as composer, lyricist, book writer and leading lady (not to mention a terrific ensemble) and the incredible timeliness of her take on the suffragist movement and particularly the more revolutionary work of Alice Paul (Taub) and the National Women’s Party. If anything, the play has become timelier through the intervention of current events.

Taub’s score is incredibly smart, using popular music forms, mainly ragtime, for the more establishment characters like Carrie Chapman Catt (Jenn Colella) and Woodrow Wilson (Grace McLean. The rest of the music is more freewheeling, with bits of recitative, Brechtian moments and a few out-and-out showstoppers. If numbers like “The March” and “Keep Marching” don’t rouse you, you’re probably dead or MAGA. The lyrics seem a little more simplistic, but then, we’ve been spoiled by Stephen Sondheim, and you can make the case that the simple lyrics are necessary to clarify the nuances of these particular historical events. The staging is simple but highly effective, and Natalio’s choreography features the best elements of Twyla Tharp and Graziela Daniele: there’s no unison, but rather every character interprets the moves in her own way. The piece’s rapport with the audience is overwhelming. And it probably helps to think how much Donald Trump or Mark Robinson would hate this show. Now, can somebody explain to me how the show with the best book and best score wasn’t Broadway’s best musical last year?

[oceanssapart]

Damon Daunno's first extra slutty solo in Love the Struggle (at Joe's Pub, 6 Dec 2022) also featuring Amber Gray and Grace McLean

[ourladyofwaysandmeans]

The March (We Demand Equality), the opening number to the upcoming musical Suffs, featuring the entire cast.

[jaybee2000]

Today in Medieval Research:

Modern avant garde musical on Hildegard of Bingen points me towards 900 year old text on the Virgin Mary being the redemption of Eve written by a women (aka my thesis topic)

Anyway.

In the Green by Grace McLean. It’s weird but cool.

[did-you-even-read-the-handbook]

I know it’s early days but if someone happens to make a slime tutorial for Bad Cinderella on Broadway please notify me. The Sentimental Men said that Carolee Carmello’s entrance is iconic and so I need to see her and Grace McLean be iconic sexy queens together, ya know?

[lakotaman420]

sorry

[countbezukhov]

listening to in my house again for the first time in a while makes me want to rip my hair out and set my room on fire