Photo by Molly Tellekson
Storytelling has been Grace Aki’s lifeblood. The actor, playwright, comedian, visual artist and podcast host has found her reason for existence, time and time again, in the simple refrain: “Tell me a story.”
Aki’s solo play “To Free a Mockingbird” will be shown in New York City at the Connelly Theater as part of the SheNYC Theater Festival later this month, following a successful run in Atlanta. In May of 2022, she put on an art exhibition “Three Acts Before Thirty” at Compère Collective in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She is a regular Broadway News correspondent for Broadway Radio and social strategist for the Grammy Award-winning record label Broadway Records. Her podcast, “Tell Me on a Sunday,” was just acquired by the Broadway Podcast Network. This multi-hyphenate has spent her career using all the tools at her disposal to tell stories.
“If I don’t do art, I don’t know another reason that I’m here,” she explained.
The New Yorker spoke with me about her art, the power of storytelling and her solo play “To Free a Mockingbird,” from her Hoboken, New Jersey, apartment, located about 10 minutes from Midtown Manhattan.
“I’ve lived in every part of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn,” she said. “I thought, ‘Never, never, never New Jersey.’ Then I came here, and I was like, ‘Oh, I really like it!’ So, I’ve been here since.”
However, this artist hails from a town nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, nearly 800 minutes from Manhattan. Dalton, Georgia, is an industrial town, known for having one of the largest textile production bases on the globe. Though it boasts that it is the “Carpet Capital of the World,” it is quickly gaining another reputation due to its theaters, music venues and diverse population — that of a quaint, southern artistic and cultural center.
It is here where I have had the good fortune of knowing Aki, as we both share the experience of growing up in Dalton. As the city becomes more and more diverse, it still finds itself within an overwhelmingly red, Republican voting bloc and has an unfortunate history of marginalizing LGBTQ+, BIPOC and immigrant residents, a political contradiction that often appears in Aki’s work.
“It’s so easy to decidedly say, ‘My hometown sucks.’ But, I also see that there’s a new generation, and it’s becoming more inclusive and diverse — more welcoming to other ethnicities — than what was already present. But then I’ll walk by a statue of a Confederate general, and then it’s a bummer,” she said with a laugh. “I see so much progress, and then I see some challenges. You know, I love home. So I don’t want to write it off, because I see opportunity. I see change.”
In this town, rich with political and cultural influence, Aki found her love for storytelling. “I first got involved in theater with this incredible puppetry camp at the Chattanooga Creative Discovery Museum,” she said.
Although she had been active in dance classes since she was a toddler, being enrolled in this puppetry camp introduced a new level of performance for the young artist. “I was like, ‘Oh, I can use my voice, and I can use my body, and I can be funny.’ That’s the first time I ever remember making somebody laugh,” she said. “It was like this adrenaline juice, like cocaine! That was the first time that I started performing.”
Aki has another interesting relationship to this part of the country, one which she explores in her solo play.
“My grandmother brought my mother over from Japan when my mother was three years old,” she said. “They were forced to assimilate to the Atlanta, Georgia lifestyle. They weren’t allowed to speak Japanese; they weren’t allowed to eat their food. I mean, my mom did not get to grow up as a Japanese young woman in the same way she would have if she were to stay in Japan, which wasn’t an option.
“But, when I came into the world, my grandmother decided that she had a second chance. So, she exposed me to so much Japanese culture,” Aki continued. “I know I carry white woman passing privilege every day, so I have to recognize that, but I am just so thankful that she got to do that for not only me, but for her. I think that was something that was really painful, to not get to enjoy their culture as much.”
Aki’s solo play tackles many deeply personal issues, from her family’s trauma to her own identity. In a style that can be compared to the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” and Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You,” Aki’s “To Free a Mockingbird” turns some of the darkest moments of her life into comedy.
“I think that it’s easy to palate generational trauma if you think you’re at a comedy show,” she said. “You can liken it closer to your new favorite — I hope it’s your favorite — stand-up special where you’re just watching a person with a microphone talk for an hour,” she said.
“There are so many white, male comedians that have done solo work,” Aki continued. “It’s always fascinated me that I don’t see women doing it. I don’t think it’s because they’re not doing it — I think it’s because they’re not being produced. So, I definitely want to be a part of the new generation that Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Michaela Coel have paved. There are so many female, nonbinary and other marginalized groups of people that want to tell their stories.”
After spending her career sharing others’ stories, whether it was through assuming a role in a play, interviewing a guest on her podcast or painting a scene from popular culture, it took years of rehearsing and workshopping to have her own story reflected in “To Free a Mockingbird.”
“For a long time when I worked on this, I was just telling my family stories, because I thought they were interesting. By the time I started working with a director, she was like, ‘Where are you in any of this? I’m not hearing your story.’ Now I’ve tacked on a bit of me in this in the very end of the show, because I realized that I’m not just a vessel. I have to tell my own story too.”
By including her own stories, Aki has found community support in a way she never anticipated.
“I think that when we tell our stories, we think that ‘I’m the only person that this has ever happened to.’ And then what you find is that when you share them, you have a whole community of people that say, ‘No, that’s my story too, and thank you for sharing it.’ That’s what I love about doing a solo show, is that it’s connecting with people and making yourself feel a little less special.”
As her solo play travels around the nation, she continues to learn more about each community and their stories, and how those stories intersect and contrast with her own.
“There’s a lot of Atlanta and Georgia heritage in the show,” she said. “So when I do an Atlanta run, when I’m telling a certain part of the story, I get a lot of responses, and it feels really good. But, then I get to a New York part of the story, and they can’t really relate to those.”
However, the audience for her New York shows is distinct from her Atlanta crowd. “When I’m in New York telling the story, at certain moments people will tense up,” Aki explained. “The first part of the show opens with the ‘Gone With the Wind’ theme, and understandably, that can be hard to hear, because we have a lot of justified racial connotation behind it. But I’m like, ‘No, don’t worry! It’s not about that. Please trust me and join me on this journey because I promise you I’m going to prove that it’s something else.’ So it’s very different.”
For Aki, audience differences are just part of the fun: “I love doing it in Georgia, and I love doing it in New York. I can’t wait to take it to L.A, to another coast. I’m very curious if it will hit and resonate the same way. But I think it will.”
She continued modestly, “This sounds so cliché, please forgive me; I just don’t want people to feel alone. Anytime I ever share anything, it’s no longer for me, because I can live with my own experiences,” she said. “But anytime you see somebody who you feel represents you, or you hear echoes of your own story, you’re more likely to share and to empathize with people. That’s what I hope every time I do this show. I just want people to feel like they’re part of a community too.”
In each and every creative venture Aki works in, her love for art, her love for storytelling and her love for humanity runs deep.
“It’s a labor of love,” she said. “I’ve been in places where I wasn’t sure if I should legitimately keep going, as in, existential life. I’ve survived a lot, and I’m so grateful. Why else did I go through all of it if not to keep sharing and to keep fostering my art and other people’s? In the world that we live in right now, what else are we doing besides the things that we love?
Aki concluded, “I love art. I don’t know another reason at this point. If I don’t keep sharing, if I don’t keep collaborating, it feels a little bleak.”
“To Free A Mockingbird” will play at the Connelly Theater on July 27 at 7:00 p.m. and July 29 at 8:30 p.m. as part of the SheNYC Theater Festival. Broadway Radio will host a talkback after the opening night on July 27. Tickets can be purchased here.
Aki’s podcast“Tell Me on a Sunday” can be streamed here, and her watercolor artwork can be purchased here. Follow @itsgraceaki on Instagram for her latest updates.