Jessica Colie McClellan made her stage debut as the evil queen in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” when she was all of 5 years old.
That experience proved to be formative, seeding a passion for acting that has taken McClellan from her home in tiny McClellanville, S.C. to New York City. She is a 13th generation McClellan, the family that founded the tiny fishing village of McClellanville.
Jessica Colie McClellan ’10
She attended the Governor’s School of the Arts and Humanities as a drama student before enrolling at the College of Charleston. A double major in classics and theatre in the Honors College, McClellan graduated in 2010.
Since leaving Charleston, she’s been busy continuing her education and advancing her acting career, including her current project: a one-woman show called “They Call Me Arethusa” that McClellan wrote and performs.
The play, which explores real-life stories of relationship violence, is being presented as part of Piccolo Spoleto and the Stelle Di Domani series.
The College Today caught up with McClellan as she was preparing for a busy schedule of upcoming performances.
RELATED: Find performance dates for “They Call Me Arethusa.”
Q: What have you been up to since graduating from the College?
A: I attended Rutgers University for my Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting. I finished in 2013 and have been a resident of Harlem, NYC for the past year. While I’ve been in NYC, I’ve had the chance to work with the League of Professional Theatre Women and the Women in the Arts & Media Coalition, as well as many wonderful opportunities to perform with several indie theater companies around the city.
Q: You funded “They Call Me Arethusa” on kickstarter.com. Tell us about that.
A: I wouldn’t have been able to survive the stress of crowd funding without my director, Mark Kennedy. He had successfully funded two projects prior to this one, and had a lot of proven strategies at his disposal. We had a very generous donor do a challenge grant for us, which really helped us get close to our goal with a whole week left to fund.
Q: Describe your play.
A: It’s a one-woman show. Half of the monologues are very contemporary testimonials from women who are survivors of Intimate Partner Violence, something that statistics say affects 1 in 4 women in the U.S. Based on my interviews, I found that every woman I interviewed had violence make some impact on her life, whether it was first hand experience or a friend or family member who experienced violence. To lift the piece, I also include several heightened monologues, sort of like poems, set in the world of the old South, with characters from Greek mythology. Each of these Southern/Mythological stories features a woman who experienced some sort of violence herself, and the romanticizing of those myths is deconstructed. Arethusa’s story is the myth that sets the framework for the show.
RELATED: Listen to Spoleto Today’s interview with Jessica Colie McClellan.
Q: What’s next for you after Spoleto?
A: It’s always a little crazy, being a theatre artist. Each job has such a short expiration date compared to more traditional careers. After Spoleto, I plan on submitting Arethusa to some other festivals around the country. I also recently signed with an agent at Tout Talent in the southeast and would love to continue pursuing opportunities to do work on film and television. Most importantly, I would like to continue working with survivors of Intimate Partner Violence and explore my role in bringing justice to those who aren’t being helped by the current way our system, or our culture, works.
