This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
09/12/2019 12:01 AMDid you miss Taylor Mac’s 24-hour, non-stop show, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, when it was presented in New York in 2016?
It won’t be quite the same as that theatrical odyssey, but you can get at least a taste of the legendary interactive event when the now-legendary performance artist brings a two-hour version of the show to Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts in Middletown on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. for Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (Abridged).
Mac will also be in-conversation at a free event on Friday, Sept. 20 at 6 p.m. at Wesleyan’s Memorial Chapel. There will also be three other free talks in association with the show, but minus Mac.
Over the years, Mac gradually built up to this sui generis epic, which is described as “a subjective history of American culture and dysfunction since 1776,” highlighting various musical styles, decade by decade, and artistic voices and scores of songs depicting the American dynamic over 240 years.
Four years ago, Mac began the project, first as two-hour segments dealing with just two decades of music. That included a gig at New Haven’s International Festival for Arts & Ideas in 2015 when Mac chose music of the 1980s and ‘90s. Then Mac expanded to six-hour performances, then 12-hour shows until finally Mac undertook the 24-hour event in 2016.
For that performance, there were 24 costume changes and 246 songs and a band that featured 24 musicians that gradually decreased over the course of the show to just Mac alone on stage with a ukulele.
The show was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Mac also received the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, Guggenheim and Doris Duke Awards and a MacArthur “genius” Grant that also came more than $600,000.
Not enough accolades?
Last season Mac also made his Broadway bow as a playwright with Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, which starred Nathan Lane and earned Mac a Tony Award nomination for best play.
But now Mac is back reviving elements of the epic show that suits his mind, mood and American moment. He is touring New England this fall with the abridged presentation which will also play Providence, Rhode Island at Veterans Memorial Auditorium Saturday, Sept. 14; Worcester, Massachusetts at Fenwick Theatre at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts on Monday, Sept. 16; and at the State Theater in Portland, Maine on Thursday, Sept. 19.
“I’m not very good at most things,” says the artist. “Just ask my husband. I don’t have a lot of skill outside of the theater, but I do know this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve always known that. I’ve had maybe too much confidence that I could make my vision happen, but it’s all I ever wanted to happen.”
And the gamble of improvising with a large audience that is part of a major theatrical experience?
“How do you blindfold an entire audience of 800 people if you don’t know for sure it’s going to work? Even having done as many of the segments before, you’re not sure it’s still going to work for the 24-hour show. Things were slightly different for that show. We didn’t know how a lot of this stuff was going to work —and how it was going to work after you’ve watched a show for five hours and then to ask an audience to be blindfolded. What was it going to do to their bodies and their expectations for the rest of the show? But it was lovely just to see everyone dig in. The audience was game to make it happen and it was pretty special.”
And the physical wear and tear to perform for 24 hours straight?
“I just love what happened to my voice over the 24 hours,” Mac laughs. “I basically was just left with a single octave range and by the end of the show I sounded like Harvey Fierstein.”
And will there be a film of the famed 24-hour event? Very likely, Mac says.
“We filmed four of the different six-hour segment with three cameras when we did the shows in Los Angeles and we’ll make a documentary or some concert film eventually out of that. Hopefully one day we’ll put all 24 hours out in some streaming service and people can watch whenever they want.”
A book and music from the epic show are also likely “but these things take so much time.”
“Some people are suggesting now I make films and television, but I think I’m a theater artist. There’s some ego in that but it’s also humbling. I’m a theater artist because I’m most interested in grass roots communication and ‘progression’—I won’t even call it activism. We’re just trying to go deeper into our considerations and make it a more equitable, breathable and enjoyable world.
“The way I know how to do that—and the way that I think is the most ethical—is to hang out in a room with other people and not create distance between the maker [of art] and the user. In most art forms there’s that distance—except for live performance,” he adds.
What did Mac do right after the 24 hour performance was over?
“I just went home with my husband and sisters and we sat at the dinner table—it was around 3 or something—and I just feel asleep at the table.”
Four Free Talks
Four free talks will be featured in association with the Mac show:
• “Drag Queens and Radical Faeries and Judys, Oh My!” Thursday, Sept. 19 at 4:30 p.m. at the Allbritton Center, Room 311, 222 Church Street, Middletown. This will be a panel discussion on gender performance and queer histories in sound and dance with assistant professor of theater, African-American studies, and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies Katie Brewer Ball; associate professor of music Roger Grant; and associate professor of dance and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies Hari Krishnan. The talk will be moderated by professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, sociology, and science in society Victoria Pitts-Taylor.
• There will be “A Conversation with Taylor Mac” on Friday, Sept. 20 at 6 p.m. at Memorial Chapel, 221 High Street, Middletown, moderated by Sean F. Edgecomb, assistant professor of drama at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, Edgecomb is currently co-editing a volume on the work of Mac with David Roman.
• There will be a talk by Edgecomb on Monday, Sept. 23 at 6 p.m. at Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown.
• There will be a free moderated talk with Mac’s costume designer, Machine Dazzle, Saturday, Nov. 5 at 4:30 p.m. at Memorial Chapel, 221 High Street, Middletown.
More information is available at wesleyan.edu/cfa.