Taylor Mac

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Taylor Mac (2015)

Taylor Mac (* 24. August 1973 as Taylor Mac Bowyer in Laguna Beach , California ) is an American actor, playwright, performance artist , director, producer and singer-songwriter .

Early years

Taylor Mac grew up in a violent conflict and homophobia suburb of Stockton, the son of a war veteran . His mother opened a private art school, which aroused his interest in aesthetic issues at an early age. In 1994 Mac moved to New York , where he graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts . He then began to appear as a drag queen in smaller basement theaters, and the first pieces were written: The Hot Month (1999), The Levee (2000) and The Face of Liberalism (2003).

Career

During his first years as an actor, Mac worked on developing his own "maximalist" stage language that left conventions behind. His productions make use of cabaret , commedia dell'arte , Greek theater , drag culture and contemporary musicals. Mac described himself as a "collagist" and an "Elizabethan fool". It is important to him to forego a uniform style in favor of exceeding forms and expectations. This questioning of the homogeneous, which also plays a central role in terms of content, influences his drag concept. In his own words: “I am a drag queen of my own kind and different from what people often imagine: I want to be chaotic and beautiful, super professional, amateur and ugly, masculine and feminine, on the one hand crazy and insane at the same time, on the other hand, calm and peaceful. ”One idea serves the goal of overcoming a one-dimensional personality concept:“ We do not have rituals that allow us to realize all facets of ourselves.

His piece The Young Ladies Of , which premiered at the HERE Arts Cente in New York in 2008, has an autobiographical background. During the Vietnam War , in 1968, Lieutenant Robert Mac Bowyer (Taylor Mac's father) placed an ad asking "young women" to write to him. Thousands of letters reached him. Forty years later, Taylor Mac used these letters, a self-written text for the stage and newly composed songs to confront patriarchy and the war , juxtaposing his father's Vietnam experience with his life as an eclectic artist.

The production The Walk Across America For Mother Earth premiered at the La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in 2011 . Formally based on the Commedia dell'arte, Mac addresses the protest against nuclear weapons in this piece . Anarchic activists organize a march from New York across the USA to the Nevada National Security Site . The New York Times called the play a “sweet and satirical meditation on the beautiful follies of idealism”. Although Mac's multicolored bunch of political do-gooders ended up barely showing any tangible success, their pursuit of social change is gaining audience sympathy.

Mac reached an international audience with his monumental, 24-hour work A 24-Decade History of Popular Music , which premiered in autumn 2016 after more than four years of development. Using 246 songs that were popular in the United States between 1776 and 2016, Mac tells an alternative social history of his country that not least focuses on the outcast and the oppressed. The Costume Machine Dazzle, longtime stage partner of Mac, tailored imaginative costumes for each decade. The "Celebration of Heterogeneity" was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in the theater category. In 2019 the production was invited to the Berlin Festival .

Mac's other projects include a cycle of four pieces based on the example of ancient Dionysia . The end of the tetralogy was in 2019 with the play Gary. A Sequel to Titus and Andronicus . Again Mac takes on an outsider, here the street clown Gary, who is a peripheral character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Titus Andronicus , but plays a leading role in Mac's free sequel. The play received seven Tony nominations.

Awards (selection)

Works (selection)

  • The Hot Month (1999)
  • The Levee (2000)
  • The Face of Liberalism (2003)
  • The Be (A) st of Taylor Mac (2006)
  • The Young Ladies Of (2008)
  • The Lily's Revenge (2009)
  • The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (2011)
  • Hir (2015)
  • A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (2016)
  • Gary. A Sequel to Titus and Andronicus (2019)
  • The Fri (2020)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Caridad Svich, Glamming it Up with Taylor Mac. In: American Theater . November 2008.
  2. ↑ The NYC Play That Seats Its Audience in a Ball Pit Gives In, Suspends Performances , slate.com, March 13, 2020.
  3. ↑ a b c d For Taylor Mac, the stage show is just part of the fight for the LGBT community , Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2016.
  4. ^ Sean F. Edgecomb, The Ridiculous Performance of Taylor Mac. In: Theater Journal. Vol. 64, H. 4, 2012, pp. 549-563.
  5. ↑ Who Is Taylor Mac? Get To Know The Acclaimed Mind Behind Gary- A Sequel to Titus Andronicus , broadwayworld.com, April 21, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b Taylor Mac on queering history: 'Someone like me doesn't normally get to represent America' , The Guardian, September 12, 2017.
  7. ↑ The Young Ladies Of , newdramatists.org (accessed March 18, 2020).
  8. ↑ Protesters Armed With Wigs and sequins New York Times, January 20, 2011th
  9. ↑ The Walk Across America For Mother Earth , newdramatists.org (accessed March 18, 2020).
  10. ↑ Taylor Mac's Celebration of Heterogeneity , Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 11, 2019.
  11. ↑ Taylor Mac - A 24-Decade History of Popular Music , berlinerfestspiele.de (accessed March 18, 2020).
  12. ↑ The 6 Queerest Moments at Last Night's Tony Awards , them.us, June 10, 2019.
  13. ↑ Taylor Mac wins £ 213k International Ibsen Award , thestage.co.uk, December 9, 2020, accessed December 12, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Mac, Taylor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bowyer, Taylor Mac
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor, playwright, performance artist, director, producer, singer-songwriter and drag queen
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Laguna Beach