To some people, art means taking a piece of paper and drawing when inspiration strikes. To others it means photographing the natural world. To Mac Galinson, it means acting on stage or writing songs for guitar.
Mac has been acting since he was nine. He recounts his beginning in theater as a fairly unremarkable experience: “I was like, ‘Hey, Mom. I want to try this theater thing out,’ and she was like ‘OK, you’re weird for that,’ because we’re not really an arts family.” His first role was a duckling in Honk!, a British musical adaptation of the story of “The Ugly Duckling.” By his own count, Mac has acted in twenty-five shows, many of them with the Peacock Players, a theater company in New Hampshire. “It’s a group of people based around the fact that we are all very proud of what we do,” he explains. His favorite shows to act in have been Chicago, in which he played Billy Flynn, and 12 Angry Men, in which he played Juror #10. Of the latter, he says: “It was the only time where I’d done a show where I was on the entire time, and the cast got really close because of that.” In recent years, Mac has also been in Groton shows The Laramie Project and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Urinetown, and Romeo and Juliet.
Like his acting career, Mac’s guitar-playing began abruptly. “I saw my uncle playing guitar and I was like, ‘That’s really cool. I want to be like you.’” Mac’s first guitar was a twenty-dollar Walmart starting guitar, which he learned to play from his uncle. He recalls “I was like ‘Hey, Uncle John, can you teach me how to play this?’ He was just the coolest guy for me. And he said ‘Okay, well that right there’s a G. That’s all you gotta know. You take it from there.’” Mac’s style is unique, based on “what sounds good” to him. He names the Grateful Dead as his favorite band, calling it “the only band I can listen to and not get sick of.” Mac performs regularly at the school’s Open Mic evenings. Phoebe Fry ’17, one of the heads of Open Mic, calls his performance “consistently incredible” and his guitar skills “top notch.” He is also a talented bagpipe player and has performed at various school functions since he started taking lessons in second form.
As if music and drama weren’t enough, Mac says that he’s recently been experimenting with poetry. Music, he explains, comes easier to him than the words to accompany it. “I work on all these pieces for guitar but never put lyrics to them because I never like them,” he says. “It’s hard.” His creative process for poetry, however, stems from his music: “After playing the song,” he explains “I think about what it makes me think about.”
Those who have been at the school for a couple of years might remember one of Mac’s defining features: his ponytail. During the 2015-16 school year, however, he decided to shave it off. He even remembers the date: April 28, 2015. “It had been so long and it was just getting annoying and I kind of wanted a whole new vibe.” When asked about the possibility of a ponytail revival, he laughed and responded only that “it was time.”
This fall, in his last Groton musical, Mac will take on the role of William Barfée in The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. We are all looking forward to seeing him in this highly original, eclectic role.