Taylor Mac and Theatre’s Dubious Future
Was 2016 the end of something great? Or the beginning of something terrible?
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It’s the Fourth of July, a few days after the so-called Supreme Court put more of our rights through the shredder, I’m hiding out in my bedroom, recovering from my second dance with covid, I’m thinking about (mourning?) the state of the world, when I turn on the documentary of Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music. The movie documents the one-time-only 24-hour-long performance art concert Taylor did in October, 2016.
I remember wanting desperately to go; Taylor had brought one of the hours to Iowa City the previous December (1846–1856, if you’re curious) and I found it unsettling and glorious. In that segment, Taylor pits Stephen Foster against Walt Whitman to compete for the title of Father of American Song. By doing so, we the audience immerse ourselves in the uneasy, irreconcilable contradictions that make this country what it is: a freedom-loving people who owe our wealth to slave labor; the land of the free, who stole that land; the home of the brave, who no longer have to sell wedding cakes to people we disapprove of, lest we “participate” in whatever it is we think they’re doing when they declare their love.
It’s sort of an awful time to be a freedom-loving American. Perhaps you’ve noticed!
What really hits me now, though, watching this documentary, is how weird the year 2016 was. Was 2016 the end of an era? Or its terrible beginning? I remember the dread and menace of the 2016 election; the shock of the deaths of Bowie and Prince (was it the rapture?). 2016 was the year Leslie Jones was bullied off the internet for committing the sin of daring to star in a Ghostbusters remake. Nazis put on suits and gave themselves undercuts and credibility. It was a year when the grimy oil slick of America’s worst grudges slithered out of the sewer and into public life, claiming the whole of America as its rightful property.
And there was Taylor Mac, glorious, grotesque, queer, brilliant, soulful — singing our sorrow and transmogrifying it into joy.
Look, I have covid, so I’m too tired to do this, so somebody do this for me: somebody write about how theatre wrestled with history in 2016, comparing Taylor Mac with Lin-Manuel Miranda. Contrast Hamilton, which felt so revolutionary but wasn’t, with 24-Decade, which didn’t last long enough to be revolutionary, or reach enough people, or was too queer (or just queer enough!) to make the kind of billions or achieve the cultural saturation of LMM. Or, if you have a picky thesis advisor and you need to really drill down, compare the Disney Plus release of Hamilton of the Fourth of July 2020 with the Max release of 24-Decade in 2023. Write about the parallels, how each work attempted to reveal ourselves to ourselves, how they are products of the artists’ assumptions. Hamilton, according to Miranda, was “the story of America then, told by America now.” Go to town on that one, grad students: rip that one to shreds. Then spend a few pages on Mac’s intention, articulated in this interview: “The show is not so much about history but that we have a lot of history on our backs…And how do we carry that history to help build ourselves rather than tear ourselves apart.” (See? I already have your bibliography started.) The dissertation practically writes itself!
Here in 2023, we are haunted by the ghost of 2016: it’s beyond the veil, impossible for us to reach or placate, whose chilly shadow casts a pall over everything we do now. Here in 2023, the pandemic is over (I’ll be sure to alert my doctor), and sometimes it feels like our entire future rests in the hands of an octogenarian career politician who’s not that crazy about abortion. Taylor Mac ends 24-Decade with a rendition of “People Have the Power,” and I find myself asking: is that still true? Was it ever?
I sure want it to be true. Taylor Mac says, “The artist’s job is to dream the culture forward.” I’ll tell you this much: here in 2023, theatres are imploding. There are a lot of think pieces about what we as theatre artists should do now, how we should reinvent ourselves, how we can survive. I think we will survive, because we always have. But I can no longer participate in bloodless, American Realist, bourgeois so-called “dramas” about men wrestling with their first troublesome feeling. Arthur Miller? Sam Shepard? Or even worse — all those Miller and Shepard wannabes? Thank you for your service. Please exeunt, pursued by boors.
If your theatre ain’t Taylor Mac — and I don’t mean specifically Taylor Mac, but theatre like Taylor Mac — spectacular, joyous, horrifying, subversive, unapologetic, with something actually meaningful to say about this godforsaken moment in our history — then I don’t want it. I’d rather stay home, where I can’t catch anything but my breath.
