Carolyn Bacon

I grew up as a dancer, so my relationship with theater started with embodying music and story. My first big solo was “The Pink Panther” when I was maybe 6 or 7. That iconic melody has such strong character in it, and I remember feeling the power of putting my spin on this slinky, cool music. I was a theater kid and choir nerd in school, but it was always “extracurricular” - I was never encouraged to consider the arts as a career and never did until I was finishing my Neuroscience degree and decided to apply to music graduate programs instead of medical school. Sometimes it feels like my first theater experience was at San Francisco Conservatory, playing Cinderella in Into the Woods. That was the first time I was doing theater and seeing myself as an artist, wanting an artist’s life. It’s fun to look back and see how my early love of theater helped me find my way to this profession.

I always kept journals and wrote stories from a young age. I loved Tamora Pierce’s books, especially the Lioness series, which is about this young woman forging her own path in a male-dominated world and also growing up and finding love. I think that was the first time I was conscious of how stories about women can resonate very differently because a woman is writing them. Even while I was studying Neuroscience, I worked in the writing center, and I loved reading Carl Sagan and Oliver Sachs. They both have this way of communicating their sense of wonder about the world and investigating the unknown. Science and art both require so much imagination. After I started acting professionally, I found writing could be a way to create work for myself and others, and to write toward the kinds of works I want to see more of. I was lucky to participate in the Maestra Mentorship program last year with a brilliant mentor, Nico Juber, who encouraged me to start writing songs and just embrace the idea doing things myself, rather than waiting for someone else to make things happen for me.

I'm a folk rock singer-songwriter, mostly at the piano. My biggest influences are Billy Joel and Sara Bareilles, although there are many others. I feel like I taught myself how to write songs by playing songs I love, learning how it feels to connect with the piano and just let my voice go places. Melody is very important to me, and I always pay attention when things get stuck in my head. One of my biggest sources of artistic inspiration is Nina Simone. She has such a strong point of view and transforms every song she interprets, to the point that her version becomes the version for me. She also sang from every genre, so what unifies her style is her. Listening to her records made me think of myself as a song collector like she was, and collecting songs I love led to thinking about what I would write songs about.

Imagining new possibilities for women and giving us new things to sing about. So few musicals pass the Bechdel test or reveal the complexities of women’s lives. Earlier this year, I played a new song on a show about running into my ex’s mom and realizing the depth of our relationship, missing her more than the life I thought I’d share with her son. After the show, so many people told me they’d never heard a song about that topic and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I felt so proud to write something that felt new but immediately recognizable. Women have so much catching up to do in terms of getting our shared experiences into the canon - and then what new stories can we get to? As a writer, I want to go into uncharted territory and be brave about what I choose to write about. Many things are easier to sing about than talk about.