Theater: Taylor Mac to offer 24 decades of music at marathon show at S.F.’s Curran Theater.
Taylor Mac to mount 24-decade marathon of music at the Curran
Taylor Mac, a singer, writer and performer of grand gestures in grand costumes, is in shorts and a tank top, drinking coffee in a storefront that’s closing down as evening crowds stagger up Eighth Avenue in New York City’s summer heat.
Mac has just ended an afternoon of rehearsing songs for his marathon show “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music.” The upcoming San Francisco production’s crucible is a cramped practice studio down a creaky hallway on an upper floor in the garment district — the perfect place to be anonymous.
In San Francisco, he says, the 1,600-seat Curran Theater will be anything but that when the show opens on Sept. 15.
“Judy Garland performed there,
Carol Channing. I prefer a big space,” says Mac, 44, a man with striking blue eyes whom no one noticed when he ordered coffee. “Minority voices have been relegated to the basement for a long time. We learn that the only way to be heard is to get loud and big. I call myself a fool, so I just want to get in the court.
“When you put somebody like me in a big space, the society isn’t in charge of the art, the art is in charge of the art,” he adds. “It’s so much better. It’s more fun.”
Big indeed. Mac’s show, a co-production between the Curran, Stanford Live, Magic Theatre and New York’s Pomegranate Arts, is a 24-hour tribute to popular song in the United States, from 1776 to the present, starring Mac, of course, and featuring unannounced performers — including audience members whom he drags onstage from their seats.
The version at the Curran (Sept. 15-24) will present the spectacle in four six-hour chapters. In its Brooklyn premiere last year, the marathon was, well, an outright round-the-clock marathon, in an overstuffed 800-seat venue. (The Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University will host a three-hour version on Sept. 27.)
Three centuries of music — 246 songs — are performed by Mac, who traces the show’s beginnings back to a 1986 AIDS walk in Golden Gate Park.
“We drove in from Stockton (where he was raised),” Mac recalls. “I had never met an out homosexual before, at least one who was out to me — I knew I was gay at the time, I wasn’t out at the time. The first time I saw an out homosexual, it was thousands at the same time.
“I saw a community that was being built as it was being torn apart,” he adds. “The first drag queen that I ever saw was there. There were the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. There were people who were dying who were getting pushed around in wheelchairs. The people who were pushing them had Kaposi’s sarcoma and were also dying. There were people with ACT UP screaming, but also people dancing, having a great time. They had everything there.
“I just hadn’t seen something matter before. The big gatherings in Stockton were for the Fourth of July, celebrated on July 3. This was a mass gathering of people that were changing the world.”
Besides that human mosaic, there also was a musical inspiration for the 24-hour production, says Mac, who counts Ethyl Eichelberger and Charles Ludlam among his many influences. It was no less than the singer Tiny Tim.
“I was touring in Australia, in a show that kind of had to do with Tiny Tim,” Mac says, “and a man who was a fan of Tiny Tim told me that Tiny Tim had made a concert, just him and his ukulele, to raise money for a park, singing songs from the early part of the 20th century.
“And I thought, ‘That’s what I was looking for,’ something that’s so long I couldn’t possibly do it perfectly, something that, because of its duration, I’m falling apart, the audience is falling apart, we’re all falling apart together, but as a result of falling apart we’re building bonds with each other.’ ”
Mac starts “A 24-Decade History” with singers and musicians on the stage. The cast shrinks to a solitary Mac as he takes you through the decades of American history. “I needed to have more than just me onstage. As the show goes on, the audience has to pick up the slack,” he says.
At one point in the show, he blindfolds the entire audience. The logistics for that vary. No performance is exactly the same. “We are creating it every time that we perform it,” he stresses. “It’s really about juggling calamity.”
Part of that calamity involves bringing audience members onstage. Mac knows that this spontaneity is not for everyone. He defends it nonetheless.
“American theater has trained audiences to think that the artists are supposed to do the work,” he says. “That’s not the case. We create the environment and the circumstance. You do the work.
“It’s a ritual sacrifice, and sacrifices aren’t comfortable all the time. I guarantee that there’ll be moments when you do feel comfortable and moments when you feel pure joy, but there will also be moments when you feel nervous, and I encourage you to feel nervous.
“I’m not a cruel queen. That’s not my shtick.”
Mac’s tone remained soft and friendly as he admonished a hypothetical audience. “Are you here to play or not? Are you here to consider the ideas of the world and to help bring the culture forward? Or do you want a sitting-room drama? If you want a sitting-room drama, I’m not begging for your seat. I’m not begging for you to come.”
Mac took a deep breath. “American theater’s really conservative. The days of Edward Albee being on Broadway don’t exist anymore,” he says.
“Until I look out into the audience and every single person is a drag queen — and not a polished drag queen, but a drag queen that is allowing some mess into their aesthetic,” he says, “then I’m not preaching to the converted.”
“It’s a ritual sacrifice, and sacrifices aren’t comfortable all the time.” Taylor Mac