Your new album, Tomorrow, features original songs, musical-theatre classics and cover versions. Is there a common theme? It all started with the song Tomorrow. I recorded it myself in my house while I was recovering from coronavirus. I wanted to raise money to help artists pay the bills so I reached out to Broadway Cares and Make a Difference to create a charity single. The song dropped at the time that social media went dark and no one was posting. I took this song from Annie, which is a little kid’s song that’s usually annoying, and I turned it into an anthem of hope. From there we picked more musical-theatre songs that we wanted to give a spin and make relevant to the times. You must have loved some of these songs, like Somewhere, for years I didn’t grow up with money. I’d get VHS tapes from the pawn shop or wherever and I got the VHS of West Side Story. That musical is all about race and finding a place for yourself as an immigrant. We’ve all felt displaced over the last year. As a black person in this time, we feel displaced. Where do we belong? People say, “Go back to where you came from”, but even where we come from, we don’t belong there. But there is a place for us, a time and a place where we’ll have harmony and peace. We’ve just got to get through this to get somewhere. There are new tracks written by Natasha Bedingfield, Camille Purcell and JinJin We wanted to create songs to give people joy. The music industry is changing. We can’t all sing about going to the club, ‘cos the clubs are all closed! We have to create music that connects to how people are feeling now and people want to be inspired. I think that’s what we’ve done with these songs. Having female songwriters was also very important to me. I’m all about female empowerment. How did contracting Covid affect the album? I was ill with it at the very beginning in March. I was doing Waitress in the West End with Sara Bareilles. She went home and called me and said she’d tested positive when she got back to the US. I’d been with them just the week before. As soon as the shutdown happened I got sick. I was scared. I’m away from home; my family lives in America. I used music as therapy to get me through. A song can change the mood of your whole day – it can make you feel better or cry in a way that you need to. You’re due to star in Hairspray in the West End and also tour your album in the autumn. What have you missed most about performing? The synergy between you and the audience. It’s the most powerful thing to feel – what you can do as a collective. I miss singing a song and going on an emotional ride with the audience. You don’t get that from Netflix or watching a screen. Live human interaction is what we’re all craving now. I didn’t realise how much I thrived on it. When it was gone, it was almost like I had to wean myself off it. The adrenaline rush you get every night, the energy between you and the audience. People who go to the theatre say they’ve been missing those therapy sessions too. In lockdown we’ve been performing online and there’s no applause. You don’t know if it’s good or not! What was your first high as an audience member? The show that really got me was Disney’s Aida with Heather Headley. It was the first musical I saw and the first time I saw a black woman in that light – as a queen, the leader of the whole thing. I wanted to be at the centre of the narrative, not a best friend or a sidekick, but a leading lady. My high-school teacher took me to see it and said: this is what you need to do! How can the theatre industry build back better? Diversity, diversity, diversity. Not as a trend of the season but as commonplace. And not just putting someone in a role that’s usually played by a white person. Creating all new stories that have all different types of people. Why can’t the shows we watch reflect the diversity we see in our own world? And not just diversity on stage but writers, directors, producers, casting agents. Give everyone an opportunity and we’ll have better stories because there will be more perspectives. This has been a turbulent time for America. How has it felt watching from England? It’s changed my perspective on how we were raised to view America. The country has some amazing people but it has been run on systemic racism for a long time. The pandemic has challenged the status quo. We need a change from the root not just the vine and there has been an uprooting of this ugliness. I’m sad about what’s happening but happy too – it needs to happen. If we’re ever going to make change we have to go through pain. I think about leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X who went through the pains of change. We’re going through that again for the sake of future generations. I couldn’t believe the Capitol riots; I felt so sad for my country. We are so much better than this. We have to figure out a way to unify ourselves. You’ve created your own album of hope. What songs have you been listening to in lockdown? Labrinth’s Euphoria soundtrack, which deals with addiction and mental health issues in a cool, accessible way. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway from when they were going through a similar turbulent time. It’s been comforting, like Someday We’ll All Be Free. I love a bit of Stevie Wonder too. Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing? That’s my jam! Tomorrow is out now. Marisha Wallace’s UK tour starts at Ilkley King’s Hall on 24 September.