Next Magazine: Taylor Mac
Posted January 11, 2011 at 11:35 am
Mac Daddy
by Dan Avery, Next Magazine
Stepping into photographer Karl Giant’s Murray Hill studio, I’m confronted with a labyrinth of pop-culture clutter—a Millennium Falcon, a Bionic Woman action figure, a copy of Joey Arias’ The Art of Conversation. In the background I hear a woman with a clipped British accent on the stereo. (It’s Ilyana Kadushin, narrating Dawn French’s autobiography, Dear Fatty.) In fact the only thing I can’t find is Taylor Mac, the man I’m here to interview about his new show, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth.
Then, from around the corner I hear a voice. “I’m back here, dahhhling.” It’s Mac, mimicking Kadushin’s exaggerated inflection. “Sorry, I was feeling a bit English today!” Though he’s usually seen on stage in torn fishnets, body paint and glitter, Mac, 36, is unpainted, bald and shirtless from the waist up. It’s a bit jarring, actually—until Giant enters the room and begins to apply Mac’s “look” for the cover shoot.
“I thought I’d give them fish,” says Mac, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s not talking about Chicken of the Sea. “I never do pretty-girl drag so I thought it’d be fun this time. Once, like ten years ago, I was house-sitting in the Meatpacking District and decided to do fish. I was coming back home when this guy starts shouting at me from across the street. Before I could close the door he shoved his way in and just screams, ‘You’re my fantasy!’ I was like, ‘Um, I’m not what you think I am…’ I mean, we both knew I wasn’t a real girl, but I figured he thought I was a full-time tranny or something, and under that dress I was all hairy and masculine. But he kept saying, ‘You’re my fantasy! You’re my fantasy!”
Fantasy, however, is a good word to describe Mac’s work. Through critically acclaimed theater like The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, The Young Ladies of…, and the Obie-winning The Lily’s Revenge—a five-hour epic involving six directors, 40 cast members and the story of a flower’s desire to marry a human bride—the ukulele-strumming playwright/performance artist has created a surreal form of post-modern drag that recalls Charles Ludlam and the Cockettes. Right now a half-dozen productions of The Lily’s Revenge are in the works, including one in Sydney for Mardi Gras. “I’m glad my work has a life beyond me,” Mac admits. “I don’t want to be seen as a niche artist—and I don’t think that I am.” He does , however, consider himself a drag queen. “Oh definitely. I mean, I don’t have a show at Barracuda or anything—well, I did but it was a disaster! They just didn’t get it.”
Like much of Mac’s work, The Walk Across America is loosely autobiographical. At 18, he dropped out of college to follow a group of activists as they marched cross-country toward Nevada to protest nuclear testing on what was once Indian territory. “I was looking for adventure,” Mac explains. “I had been to the site for an action and had heard about the walk. It was a mix of hardcore activist dykes, old hippies and a surprisingly large number of Belgians.” While he calls his five-month trek a “profoundly liberating and moving experience,” he says being in close quarters with such intense personalities was also grueling. “I was galvanized at the beginning, but I think I learned along the way the difference between being galvanized and being effective. And that’s what the show is about.” Don’t think this is going to be some dry consciousness-raising seminar, though. Mac promises plenty of his signature humor and festiveness in this romp. “Basically it’s a drag show, but with actors and just one drag queen—me!”
He’s reteamed with Lily’s Revenge costumer Machine Dazzle to create the show’s quasi-streetpunk aesthetic. “Machine is a kook and a mad genius,” beams Mac. “He totally understands my aesthetic—fabulous, sparkly, a little rough around the edges. I told him I wanted the cast to look like a homemade parade float.”
Mac decided to revisit his youthful pilgrimage when he was commissioned to do a piece by the radical theater company The Talking Band. “They’ve been around since the ’70s, so they get the activist/hippie thing,” he says. “Plus they use music with a lot of human voices, which is perfect for this kind of ‘forced march.’” Mac says Walk Across America also incorporates commedia dell’arte, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and even beauty pageants. (Told you it was a fantasy). “Activists can be very competitive—you’re losing and you want to win,” he says. “And even though they try to be anti-fashion, anarchists always end up looking the same.”
Mac might tease rabble-rousers, but that’s because he considers himself one. (He just recently went on his first Radical Faerie retreat). “Going on that march when I was a teenager made me realize that those kinds of actions are important. It was just ultimately not for me. I wanted to reach people in a theater. Being an activist means getting people to think outside themselves.” And good activism, he believes, is theater. “Look at ACT UP. Sprinkling ashes on the White House lawn, putting a condom on Jesse Helms’ house? That’s totally theater. They made people sit up and pay attention.” And Taylor Mac certainly has no problem getting audiences to pay attention.