March 18 and 19 at the Guthrie Theater
Provided by Guthrie Theater (Photos by Kevin Yatarola)
The Guthrie Theater (Joseph Haj, Artistic Director) is proud to present Taylor Mac in A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: The 20th Century Abridged, part of Mac’s ambitious, multi-year effort to chart the 24-decade history of popular music in America. Conceived, written, performed and co-directed by Mac, the two-show engagement on March 18 and 19 on the Wurtele Thrust Stage is presented as part of the Guthrie’s Singular Voices/Plural Perspectives series.
“Taylor Mac is one of our country’s most significant artists, and this show invites our community to witness and join in conversation with one of the great performance artists of our time,” said Artistic Director Joseph Haj. “Presenting this piece as part of our Singular Voices/Plural Perspectives series is something that I am extremely proud to do.”
Taylor Mac (who uses “judy,” lowercase sic, not as a name but as a gender pronoun) has created internationally award-winning performance events that at once provoke and embrace diverse audiences. In A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: The 20th Century Abridged, audiences can expect a musical romp through the 20th century, a subjective history told through songs ranging in genre from Tin Pan Alley to rock ‘n’ roll. With a five-piece band, this outrageously entertaining performance represents a piece of what is evolving into Mac’s most ambitious project to date – a 24-hour long marathon concert spanning 240 years.
In a recent review of a show from the project, The New York Times wrote, “In this playful and thoroughly winning tour through American pop history, Mr. Mac isn’t merely performing a concert….His interest in pop is as much anthropological as musical. With an emphasis on the experience of outsiders in America…he invites the audience to time-travel along with him and experience the turbulent past by playing its own role in the show.” ArtForum called A 24-Decade History of Popular Music a “face-wrenchingly funny…chronicle of sex, repression, expression, and community” and said, “Mac is a master performer, riveting storyteller, and charismatic, otherworldly creature, dressed to the tens in artist/designer Machine Dazzle’s magnificent metamorphic glitz.” And Time Out NY says “Taylor Mac doesn’t just defy categorization; he makes the categories themselves seem irrelevant.”
Taylor Mac has garnered acclaim as a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, cabaret performer, performance artist, director and producer, for work ranging from Mac’s OBIE Award-winning piece The Lily’s Revenge to judy’s critically lauded collaboration with Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman and Paul Ford, The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, which co-stars Mac and Patinkin. Mac made many top critics’ Best Theater of 2015 lists for Hir, a dark comedy that played at Minneapolis’ Mixed Blood Theatre in early 2015 and made its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons last fall. The New York Times described Hir, Mac’s Off-Broadway playwriting debut, as “sensational in all senses of the word” and called Mac “immensely gifted.”
A 24-Decade History of Popular Music is presented as part of Singular Voices/Plural Perspectives, the Guthrie’s curated series of plays designed to inspire community dialogue. Selected by Artistic Director Joseph Haj, this dynamic set of programming is comprised of four solo shows featuring nationally acclaimed artists. One of the hallmarks of the series is specially-tailored post-show conversations with the audience utilizing the themes and ideas in the productions as a point of entry for discussion.
Tickets
A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: The 20th Century Abridged
Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, 612.377.2224
March 18, 19, 7:30pm, Wurtele Thrust Stage
The post Taylor Mac is a ‘Riveting Storyteller’ in ‘History of Music’ appeared first on .