“I had to become the father of my family very young because my parents divorced when I was 12. My situation was a little bit unusual in that my father kind of disappeared, and I had been making a fair amount of money as a kid, doing commercials and television and film. We needed money, and I kind of became the breadwinner. But I had this amazing world that I had access to, which was the world of the entertainment industry. My mom was supportive of my taking over and saying, "This is, I think, what we need to do." She liked the idea of moving to New York, so we moved to New York when I was 17 with a play that I had gotten. Then she got cancer and became really sick, so I had to take care of her full time. That lasted for about eight years, and then she died when I was 25. That was a rough go. At the same time, I had an amazing other world, and my other world was the world of make-believe and pretend, which I got to participate in on the soaps, with happy families and Christmases, Easters, miracles, love, weddings, and children. The pretend world that I spent a large amount of time in became a great way to balance what was sort of tragic in my real life.”

Our guest today is Cady McClain. You probably know her from her long and celebrated career in daytime television. She is a three-time Emmy® Award-winning actress. She plays Pamela Curtis on CBS’ Beyond the Gates, and is the Artistic Director of Axial Theatre, and her directorial work includes the documentary, Seeing is Believing: Women Direct, a fascinating look at the challenges and triumphs of women behind the camera. Her memoir, Murdering My Youth, is an honest and sometimes difficult book about growing up as a child actor in the spotlight. Her work across all these different art forms—acting, directing, writing, art, and music—all seems to be connected by a commitment to telling true stories, no matter how complicated.

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“I won my first Emmy when I was 21, which was the result of absolutely devoting myself day and night for two years to doing all the scene work. I attended classes simultaneously and did plays until my mother died. I studied with Michael Howard for eight years. Even when I was so tired I couldn't get up to do a scene, he would say, "Get up and do a poem." It helped me enormously; it saved me.

The way I was trained and how I train others is that you know when you’re in the zone. Oh God, it feels so good. It feels like flying. And that's what you want. You want to be so unselfaware that you're on liftoff?

I had to become the father of my family very young because my parents divorced when I was 12. My situation was a little bit unusual in that my father kind of disappeared, and I had been making a fair amount of money as a kid, doing commercials and television and film. We needed money, and I kind of became the breadwinner. But I had this amazing world that I had access to, which was the world of the entertainment industry. My mom was supportive of my taking over and saying, "This is, I think, what we need to do." She liked the idea of moving to New York, so we moved to New York when I was 17 with a play that I had gotten. Then she got cancer and became really sick, so I had to take care of her full time. That lasted for about eight years, and then she died when I was 25. That was a rough go. At the same time, I had an amazing other world, and my other world was the world of make-believe and pretend, which I got to participate in on the soaps, with happy families and Christmases, Easters, miracles, love, weddings, and children. The pretend world that I spent a large amount of time in became a great way to balance what was sort of tragic in my real life.”

Our guest today is Cady McClain. You probably know her from her long and celebrated career in daytime television. She is a three-time Emmy® Award-winning actress. She plays Pamela Curtis on CBS’ Beyond the Gates, and is the Artistic Director of Axial Theatre, and her directorial work includes the documentary, Seeing is Believing: Women Direct, a fascinating look at the challenges and triumphs of women behind the camera. Her memoir, Murdering My Youth, is an honest and sometimes difficult book about growing up as a child actor in the spotlight. Her work across all these different art forms—acting, directing, writing, art, and music—all seems to be connected by a commitment to telling true stories, no matter how complicated.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“So I think that part of colonialism for Indigenous peoples has been this idea that Indigenous peoples aren't thinking peoples and that we don't have thought on a kind of systemic level. One of the things that I was interested in doing is intervening in that because I think Indigenous people have a lot of beautiful, very intellectual, theoretical contributions to make to the world. A lot of our theory is encoded in story, but a lot of our theory is also encoded in land-based practice. You can't learn about it from reading books or from going to lectures. You have to really be out on the land with elders for long periods of time.”

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about her new book,Theory of Water. Theory of Water is a rich, complex, and deeply personal reflection on world-making and life-giving processes best captured in the fluidity of water as it circulates through all our bodies and the planet. It is a largely collective project that enlists our listening and love, and helps us face the violence of all forms of dominance, enclosure, and containment. We are especially gifted to have the chance to listen to one of the songs from Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, and have her comment on it and the relation of her music to her writing. This is a particularly special episode of Speaking Out of Place.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight previous books, including the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies, which was short listed for the Dublin Literary prize and the Governor General’s award for fiction. Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, released by You’ve Changed Records in 2021 and short-listed for the Polaris Prize and she was the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award. Her latest project Theory of Water was published by Knopf Canada/Haymarket books in the spring of 2025. Leanne is a member of Alderville First Nation.

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