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Biography
Taylor Mac is an American actor, playwright, performance artist, director, producer, and singer-songwriter active mainly in New York City. In 2017, Mac was the recipient of a "Genius Grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Mac was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Taylor Mac is a theatre artist who prefers to write a bio in the first person. Hello. I'm also a theatre artist who longs to be rid of the usual bios that are lists of achievements. Here's something different.
In case you don't know, my pronoun is judy (only capitalized when at the start of a sentence, like a normal pronoun). A few people have claimed I use this pronoun as a joke. They are uninformed. It's not a joke, which doesn't mean it's not funny. It's a personalized pronoun for someone whose gender (professionally and personally) is constantly changing. My gender isn't male or female or non-binary (which oddly creates a binary between people who are non-binary and people who are binary). My gender is “performer” (one day I'll get it on the passport). It's also an art piece. Imagine getting to have a pronoun that's an art piece! I'm here to tell you that it's as annoying to navigate as it is delicious. You too may change yourself. I suppose that's why I've made a life in the theatre, because it's a life geared towards the act of change.
Here's something a bunch of us theatre folk are considering, in terms of change: How can we make “wondering” the center of dramatic action, rather than centering the achievement of goals that are inherit in conflict? Sarah Ruhl says most theatre is made in the form of a male orgasm. That seems accurate, in terms of theatre usually engorging to catharsis. But may we add that the radical queer understands a male orgasm may be varied, multiple, and circular? All this to agree: There's more than one way to engage with others.
There was once an acting teacher who said, “When your character is alone on stage their action is one of three things: Praying, figuring out, or recalling.” Wise as that craft may be, may we transform that triumvirate into a truncation, one which offers an expansion? While the method acting teacher is interested in showing how people are, some of us are (also?) interested in using theatre to explore possibility. Could we turn our craft into a vagary of wondering? In other words, how do we become less knowing and more Socratic?
And are these actions reserved only for when we are alone? Or singular? Or hierarchical? Here's a funny thing you start to wonder about as you climb the ladder: If access to the tower means no access to the street, maybe, baby, it ain't worth it. And that tower may be the room where it happens, but the street is where it starts and where it's at.
I also wonder: Would an isolated child really dream towards theatre if it meant spending even more alone time? Though, is a character ever really alone? Even when rehearsing a one-person show, the ancestral makers are present. So rather than being in a tantrum-tower-building-isolating-your turn-my turn conflict, how might we wonder WITH them?
A start may be to rid ourselves of numbers. Twenty-four-hours. Two hundred people. Eight acts. Five-character play. Ninety minutes. Are all these numbers ways to disengage from the challenge of content? Does form do the same?
Judy's been a form queen. I love a hand painted map. Personalized, researched, detailed, figurative, metaphorical, and imperfect. Essentially: Stack the genres, layer the forms, delight in the human warbles, throw in a little direction, notice the image is faded, get lost, damp, realize it's grown something that might be harming you, try to fix it, try to clean it, hope it worked, realize it hasn't, choose to make use of the harm, find a different way, repeat with variation, and call it theatre.
And… I wonder if it's time to consider that form, style, aesthetics, pace, duration, craft, and process may not be content? Gosh forbid. We haven't yet achieved enough critical mass of agreement that they are content. Don't give up yet Taylor Mac. There is more work to be done before derailing this wholistic approach with sabotaging doubt. Commit gyrl.
Still… there is a nagging question: Are we all simply Virgos obsessing over the categories, stratagems, and lists in order to ground our nomadic insecurities with an organizing principal chained to want?
Here's a biographical detail for this bio: I'm a Virgo. Though I don't believe in astrology. Most of the people I hold dear are astrology nuts. It's hard to hold firm to a belief when dearness gets in the way.
Another dear thing, which keeps getting in the way of belief: How can we be quiet while still freeing ourselves from the Puritan dominance over expression? Another way to ask it: How may we maintain our gentle souls in a tough place full of so many rules and mountains? Must the tender queens be “fierce” to chisel a place for themselves in the world? In order to survive? Must they be queens; rulers with subjects? May they not be tender? Must they pull up their bootstraps and emerge from dark caves, ready for battle? Must they brag and promote and grow, grow, grow, simply to be considered?
There's a middle-aged consideration for ya.
Speaking of middle age and bragging and promoting… back to the bio. Some theaters, producers, and playbills have rules about bios: No jokes; don't thank anyone; get rid of the personal; forget the philosophy; 100 word count; and simply list. And perhaps, in a world of so many themes, a list is kinder. Must we be challenged everywhere? Shall we manifesto ourselves into corners, even in the playbill? Shall we exhaust the reader with questions before the show has even begun?
And a different framing: Is the “list" similar to the peaceful and important work of the calling of the names? A way of saying, “This happened! You may not have been there to witness, but it happened! Recognize!” And if the title fails to provide you with the information that it was a sideshow musical about the gentrification of Coney Island—starring Bridget Everett, Tigger!, Dirty Martini, Bianca Leigh, and Ruby Lynn Maher, where Julie Atlas Muz choreographed Basil Twist's lady puppets to watch on as Taylor Mac performed a naked, and painted green, de-tucking—perhaps it is enough to wonder with nothing more than its title: Red Tide Blooming.
In case all this might be true (that a list in a bio is more virtuous), below is the traditional biographical list of shows (rituals), competitive kindnesses (awards), and debt (gratitude). It's essentially an engorging towards catharsis. Feel free to read it and decide for yourself which gives you the context you need to open your heart (perhaps neither… oh no, then we'll have to put our hopes on the show). Or as the drag queen with extra makeup time once said, “Yes, and...”.
Taylor Mac is the author of Joy and Pandemic; Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus; A 24-Decade History of Popular Music; Prosperous Fools; The Fre; Hir; The Walk Across America for Mother Earth; The Lily's Revenge; The Young Ladies Of; Red Tide Blooming; Cardiac Arrest or Venus on a Half-Clam; The Face of Liberalism, Okay, A Crevice, The Hot Month; and the revues Holiday Sauce; The Last Two People on Earth (created with Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman and Paul Ford); Comparison is Violence; and The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac. Mac is the first American to receive the International Ibsen Award, is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a Tony nominee for Best Play, and the recipient of the Kennedy Prize (with Matt Ray), the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert Award, a Drama League Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, the Booth, two Helpmann Awards, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, two Obie's, two Bessies, and an Ethyl Eichelberger. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is currently the resident playwright at the Here Arts Center.
Thank you Linda Brumbach, Alisa Regas, Kristin Marting, Morgan Jenness, Nina Mankin, Lynbarbara Mahler, Liz Swados, Paul Lucas, Machine Dazzle, Matt Ray, Niegel Smith, Robin Bowyer, Marcy Coburn, Kat Wentworth, Patt Scarlett, mom, and all the people who keep coming back.
Productions
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| COMPANY | TITLE | DATES | HERE | The Hang | 1/20/2022 - 3/6/2022 |
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Artist Information
All information is derived from OPERA America's Season Schedule of Performances and titles databases which date back to 1991. OPERA America is constantly updating this data. If you feel that a work or an artist has been omitted or that information is incorrect, please use the linked forms below. Title Information Form Artist Information Form
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