from the katharine hepburn cultural arts center in old saybrook, connecticut it's the kate. ♪ well, youhen i was a kid, i knew i wanted to be an actress. i got an mfa in acting and then went back to chicago, my hometown, and started doing theatre. and i did a lot of places nobody's heard of. second city and steppenwolf-i worked for both of those companies and a lot of church basements and a lot of bars and then i eventually with the real live brady bunch ended up in los angeles. bobby, could you come here? then i started doing guest spots on sit-coms and then christopher guest asked me to be in one of his movies. that opened up the whole world to me. if we could, if we could get this picture of the dog and, and maybe one of these in there. i would say my first big break was probably best in show. suzie q. you know, i've been on a television show called glee. i was on that for about seven years. you've crossed me for the last time, you little schuster. do you have any idea how many times you've said that?

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, ♪ from the katharine hepburn cultural arts centersaybrook, connecticut, it's the kate. i'm mary lambert. i'm a singer-songwriter and spoken word artist and activist and writer. ♪ i'm a million miles away from anywhere. ♪ i grew up in an abusive home and for me songwriting was immediately just something that i clung to around seven or eight. it was an outlet of it's okay to have sad feelings, to have, you know, anger, to have depression, wherever you're at. love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet, and brother, arm wrapping shoulders; remember, this is important-you are worth more than a waistline. i get asked a lot in certain situations of like, you know, were you ever bullied for being gay?

from the katharine hepburn cultural a arts center in old saybrook, connecticut, it's the kate. ♪ goince, gonna wear the pretty dress. ♪ songs are written somewhere else and then you have to be ready to get your songs, whatever those are. i don't really make a distinction between spirituality and musicianship or art. i mean art and music are kind of religion to me. i see god, that concept, in art and music. i'm in love with language. i'm a writer and language has power and beauty. i like unexpected pairings of words and, you know, all of those things. i like finding the melody in prose.