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  • A Ridiculous Look at the History of American Song
  • Kelly Aliano (bio)
Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Conceived, written, performed, and co-directed by Taylor Mac, co-directed by Niegel Smith, costumes by Machine Dazzle, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY, September 15–October 9, 2016.

‘‘This is my subjective take on history,” Taylor Mac reminded the audience during the third part of A 24-Decade History of Music. This incredibly ambitious theatrical project takes subjectivity to the extreme, allowing Mac to tell the history of American culture not only through its popular music, but also through a very particular hybrid performance style: one built on a combination of rock concert, stand-up comedy show, cultural studies lecture, and the rich legacy of queer performance. Despite the varied tapestry that is woven together to create the show, this epic work ultimately transcends any individual legacy of which it may be a part.

The show is performed in an eight-part cycle with each “act” approximately three hours in length and covering three decades in American history. I partook of Act III (1836–1866), entitled “Puppets, Whitman, and Civil War Reenactment,” as well as Act VII (1956–1986), “A March, a Riot, and a Backroom Sex Party.” Despite their connective tissue, each hour of the performance offers a complete theatrical experience in and of itself. While some hours were more engaging than others, the completed cycle gives a thorough, thought-provoking, and rich overview of musical history, the American experience, and perhaps most thrillingly the particularities of Mac’s subjective perspectives on the past. This imaginative and enlightening extravaganza is sprawling in its historical scope, and Mac regularly talks to the audience about his choice of songs, providing necessary context for each of the numbers. In addition, Mac creates an interactive performance space by engaging with the audience in ways that are both confrontational and delightful, rendering a performance experience unlike any traditional musical. [End Page 40]Mac takes audiences on a journey that begins from the moment we enter the performance space. When I attended Act III, everyone was encouraged to grab a pillow and sit on the floor, inspiring a more intimate and communal sort of theatrical arrangement. It seemed as if we were all companions aboard a ship sailing across a sea of music history, with each individual sharing in something ephemeral and transcendent. But this inclusive soundscape is not without threat. Throughout the show, elements of the performance demand direct audience participation, such as dancing along with the music, holding up protest signs, or throwing ping-pong balls. In such a massive industrial-like space as St. Ann’s Warehouse, it might seem as though an individual could get lost in the auditorium. To prevent this, Mac ensures that the performance extends throughout the space, even including the audience in the balcony seats for a back-room sex party sequence in Act VII.

Mac pushes the audience interaction even further by consistently calling upon audience members at random, subjecting them to participatory activities that vary from simply standing on stage while a song plays, to pretending to be a zombie, to becoming a deceased Judy Garland being carried out of the theatre. The feeling of comfort derived from the living-room-type setting in Act III was blended with a tense actor-audience relationship reminiscent of the loft performances of Jack Smith, during which Smith would invite friends over for an evening’s entertainment, only to make them wait hours for a performance to begin. Mac then would recruit them to perform in the show while judy (Mac’s preferred gender pronoun, lowercase sic) served as director- cum-tyrannical-dictator. Despite the community feeling that arose from being part of a Smith show, an audience’s bond could have developed as much from the cruelty of this setting as from its communal nature. Similarly, Mac does not shy away from this kind of mid-performance directing of (un)willing participants drawn from the crowd of spectators; however, judy approaches these interactions with a warmth that seems more reminiscent of children playing than of a raging auteur. The purpose, in Mac’s case, seems...

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