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[0:30] Robert Bannon: They have been out here working and touring and doing all the things and writing originals. They're crazy because they write original musicals! You know how many years it takes to do like decades years? What is Penelope? Who is Penelope? It's a contemporary chamber musical. It's got Grace. It's got Alex's music, and it's out and streaming right now. Penelope Live at Joe's Pub is here. Welcome Grace McLean and Alex Bechtel. I'm going to say your name wrong. I got scared.

[0:57] Alex Bechtel: You should be scared. It's Bechtel like the Bechtel test.

[1:04] Robert Bannon: I was going to say Bechel. Oh, but I like that. Sometimes people class up my name and I'm really here for it. So the album is out. Tell me, you know, Grace, you have had a lot of Broadway shows and you have been in this game and you have toured. Like I was reading your bio and you were like in Pakistan and stuff singing for the people.

[1:26] Grace McLean: Yeah.

[1:27] Robert Bannon: So why that? How did this idea, where did it come from? Who started it? When?

[1:33] Grace McLean: Alex started it. It's all his fault. This is Alex's baby.

[1:40] Alex Bechtel: I started writing this in the pandemic. I'll let him tell you about that, but I just want to say like I was a huge fan of Alex's before getting involved with this beautiful piece that he wrote. And so it's been truly an honor to work with him these past couple of years on developing this beautiful lady, and we're just so freaking thrilled that we're finally able to share her in this form, in the form of the album with you. You can come and go on this journey wherever you are, and if you aren't, you're probably going to be in Scotland, and that's when you should come see the show of Penelope at Edinburgh. But before we get there, listen to this baby because she's out. She's streaming now. You know, people come to Edinburgh, they come on the show, and then they get big giant runs in New York City. So listen, I'm putting it out there right now. They're going to go over there. The show is coming out. The album is out. They're doing things right.

[3:12] Robert Bannon: Alex has seven Barrymore awards. Drew Barrymore, John Barrymore. He has seven awards. He has Ethel. I'm trying to think of Barrymore's. That's a good one. He's got all those awards. He's written a ton of shows. How do you describe your artist? Your composer, an actor, a sound designer, a writer, a director, a teaching artist? Are you just an artist who writes music?

[3:37] Alex Bechtel: Yeah, the way that I've been talking about sort of my mission statement is that I make new works of music theater and musical theater. So sometimes that's just like me writing a piano solo and putting it out on Spotify. Sometimes that's me as an actor helping to devise a piece because I work a lot in this sort of experimental devised theater community and scene, and sometimes that's being hired as a sound designer who composes new music. And I feel really fortunate in that, you know, I'm not the best actor for every show. I'm not the best composer for every show. I'm not the best music director. But because I wear a couple different hats, it has afforded me the ability to work on a lot of different projects in a lot of different capacities.

[4:20] Robert Bannon: So yeah. So Penelope and the idea, you two-part question, Alex. When did the idea come from and when did you reach out to Grace and how did she become a part of not only the performing aspect of it but the creating aspect of it?

[4:34] Alex Bechtel: Yeah, I started writing Penelope in the summer of 2020 because the pandemic hit, and at the time I was in a long-distance relationship. My partner at the time was in grad school in Boston, and I was still living in Philadelphia, and so we had to spend those like quarantine months in different cities. And so as I was, you know, stuck in the house in South Philadelphia, these songs and instrumental pieces from the point of view of Penelope from the Odyssey started showing up. And it was really therapeutic practice to write into the metaphor of this character's experience through my own emotional experience. And I put that out as a sort of concept album in the fall of 2020, but then more songs kept showing up after that little concept album was out in the world.

And so I reached out to my friend Eva Steinmetz, with whom I've made a lot of work, with a director and maker of new work. And I was like, let's expand this into a musical. We did one summer at the Orchard Project, which is this amazing new work incubator in upstate New York. It was a Zoom summer because we were still in the throes of the pandemic. And at the end of that first round of workshops, we wanted to do a concert, and I had just moved to New York. And we were thinking about who could do just the concert of this music because there was no script at the time. We just had a sort of first draft of the score. And we had just met Grace because Grace had seen a musical that Eva and I made with my theater company Lightning Route Special called The Appointment, which we did at New York Theater Workshop next door in 2019.

And she had reached out to us and said like basically that she was fans of our work and if there was anything that we had in the future that we thought she might be right for, she'd like to work with us. And that was what sort of gave us the idea of like we were making this thing. We were like we need someone who is, we have this impossible ask, right? You have this impossible brief with Penelope the show where you like you need someone who's a classical actor and the front woman of a rock band and kind of a modern dancer and kind of a clown. And it's kind of, it's insane. And so, and you know what I'm learning is that there was mutual admiration between us and Grace over the years before working on this project where she had, she says like manifested this thing of wanting to work with us. And we're over here being like, I mean, I'm going to email her and ask her and she's not going to do it, you know? And she did it. It's worth asking. And she did it.

[7:02] Alex Bechtel: And we've sort of, and then what happened was we had a series of canceled concerts because of COVID, which was hilarious for a show that was born out of the COVID pandemic. But in between these canceled concerts, before we did our first sort of like work in progress showing, the Orchard Project asked us if it would be useful to come back upstate and have an in-person workshop that led to a couple of shows. And that was when we realized, you know, Eva and I had talked and we're like what if we just, you know, build the script together? Grace is such a brilliant writer. We're both such huge fans of her work both as a singer-songwriter and as a playwright. And it was just like it felt like a no-brainer to be building this thing that was a solo musical with such a dynamic and creative artist.

Like it would be silly to try and put someone else's words in her mouth, and it's like let's all build those words together. And it has led to such a beautiful, just such a good time. It's been so great making this over the years because we work really well together and fit really well together. But also I think it gives the dialogue such an immediacy and groundedness and homespun feeling. I've had people over the years ask me how much of the script is written down and how much Grace is just making up on the spot. And I'm like it's all written down. It just feels like she's just talking to you because, and this is, you know, my experience of devised work very often, it's like when the actor on stage is speaking lines that they themselves created and crafted, it can feel so much more honest and immediate.

[8:34] Robert Bannon: That is, you know, what I love so much, Grace, is that that journey and that story and the mutual admiration. You know the Odyssey, Penelope, the Odyssey, the movie and you know Anne Hathaway and yada yada yada. I don't, is your, please don't tell me that Grace is it like three and a half hours long your show like the Odyssey because I have, oh honey, I got real bad ADD.

[8:56] Grace McLean: We're not going to do that to you. We're not going to do that. We're capping out about right around an hour, maybe just over, just over, and it's gonna fly by. You're not gonna look at your watch once. You are gonna go on a journey in those 65, 70, 75 minutes. You're gonna go all the place and guess what? We're not going anywhere. We're staying right where we are, and it's all, I mean that's the thing, that's the way the show Penelope, what is she doing? She's sitting and she's waiting, but she's, that's not doing nothing. That is living a life. You're stuck, but you still gotta live, and that's what we're doing, and that's what we have crafted. That's what storytelling is, man.

[9:36] Robert Bannon: You're fun, Grace and Alex. I don't have hair that does anything.

[9:44] Grace McLean: I'll do it for you.

[9:45] Robert Bannon: Grace, you know people may know you because you did Suffs and you did Bad Cinderella and you did Josh Groban in The Comet. I love Josh. I just saw Josh Groban last month in concert and I love him. So you've done all this work but then, and television and etc., but you are a writer and you do musical theater and you write musicals and you've taught classes like everywhere and you also have, we were talking about Barrymore Awards. I mean you have your Lortel Award and you have your Richard Rodgers Award for writing and you know.

[10:16] Grace McLean: I've got two Richard Rodgers Awards now. Double Richard Rodgers. Penelope got a baby.

[10:24] Robert Bannon: So what is, for me, is what I love is that your first musical was In the Green and when Lincoln Center, you write a musical and then Lincoln Center's like, yeah sure, we love it. That doesn't really happen. So working, that was yours. So now working collaboratively and performing it, is it different? Is it fun? What have you learned about yourself as a writer?

[10:45] Grace McLean: Yeah, that's a great question because I will say In the Green, it really became a thing that like it was born out of my weird obsession with this historical person Hildegard von Bingen, this 12th century German mystic nun polymath. But it really, you know, I was really writing about some things. There was something about this woman's life that like pinged with some stuff I was dealing with, but you know, that's what we're doing. I'm using that backdrop for la la la, but it was a thing that was very personal to me and I felt like I needed to figure out how to do this and I needed to figure out how to write it because I had worked with some different people when I was in the development. As you said, it takes years, years to make a musical, and I was figuring out how to work and how I wanted to work on this, that piece in particular.

And ultimately it came for it, I was like, Grace, you need to figure out what your voice is because sometimes I would work with people and I'd be like, that's great, but like I can't, I don't know if I can articulate why that's not quite what I need this to be like I need.

[11:54] Robert Bannon: Welcome to The Roundtable! Today, we have the incredible Alex Bechtel and Grace McLean here to discuss their award-winning musical, Penelope.

[12:24] Alex Bechtel: Thanks for having us, Robert!

[12:46] Grace McLean: Yes, thank you! We're excited to be here and talk about this project.

[13:08] Robert Bannon: So, let's dive right in. Penelope is such a unique take on an ancient epic. What inspired you both to tell this story from Penelope's perspective?

[13:30] Alex Bechtel: Well, it really started from a personal place for me. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself separated from my partner, and it made me think about the themes of waiting and longing. That led me to reimagine the story of Penelope, who waited for Odysseus for twenty years.

[13:40] Grace McLean: And I think that perspective is so important. Penelope's voice has often been overlooked in the original narrative, and we wanted to give her the space to express her emotions and experiences.

[13:50] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. The themes of love and resilience really resonate today. How did you both approach the musical's sound and style?

[14:10] Alex Bechtel: We wanted to blend folk-pop music with intimate storytelling. The idea was to create a sound that feels both contemporary and timeless, reflecting Penelope's journey.

[14:30] Grace McLean: And we also incorporated poetic movement into the storytelling. It’s about creating a visceral experience for the audience, allowing them to feel what Penelope feels.

[14:50] Robert Bannon: That sounds beautiful. Can you tell us about the collaborative process between the two of you in writing the music and lyrics?

[15:10] Alex Bechtel: It was very much a partnership. We would often bounce ideas off each other, and Grace would bring her unique perspective as a performer to the table, which helped shape the music.

[15:30] Grace McLean: And I think our different backgrounds really complemented each other. Alex has a strong compositional voice, while I brought my experience from the stage, which helped us craft the characters and their emotions.

[15:50] Robert Bannon: It sounds like a wonderful synergy. What has the response been like to Penelope so far?

[16:10] Alex Bechtel: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. People seem to connect with the story on a personal level, which is what we hoped for.

[16:30] Grace McLean: Yes, it’s been incredible to see audiences engage with Penelope’s journey and reflect on their own experiences of love and waiting.

[16:50] Robert Bannon: That’s fantastic. And now with the release of Penelope: Live at Joe's Pub, how does it feel to share this work with an even wider audience?

[17:10] Alex Bechtel: It’s thrilling! Performing at Joe's Pub was such a special experience, and capturing that energy in the live album allows us to reach people who may not be able to see the show in person.

[17:30] Grace McLean: Plus, we’re gearing up for our run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is another amazing opportunity to share our work with a global audience.

[17:50] Robert Bannon: That’s exciting! What do you hope audiences take away from Penelope?

[18:10] Alex Bechtel: I hope they walk away with a deeper understanding of the complexities of love and the strength it takes to wait and hope.

[18:30] Grace McLean: And I want them to feel empowered by Penelope’s story. It’s a reminder that even in the face of uncertainty, we can find resilience and hope.

[18:50] Robert Bannon: Beautifully said. Thank you both for sharing your insights today.

[19:10] Alex Bechtel: Thank you for having us, Robert!

[19:30] Grace McLean: Yes, thank you!

[19:52] Robert Bannon: Be sure to check out Penelope and the live album. It’s a journey worth experiencing!

[20:22] Alex Bechtel: We appreciate your support!

[20:50] Grace McLean: And we can’t wait for everyone to see what we’ve created.

[21:20] Robert Bannon: Until next time, keep exploring the world of theater and storytelling!

[21:50] Alex Bechtel: Bye!

[22:20] Grace McLean: Bye!

[22:48] Robert Bannon: See you soon!

[23:16] Robert Bannon: Thanks for listening!

[23:32] Robert Bannon: Don’t forget to subscribe!