Taylor Mac, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated performance artist and playwright, once spent 24 hours on a Brooklyn stage reexamining the American songbook while wearing ornate drag. Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music devoted one hour to each 10-year span since 1776, tracing U.S. history — particularly that of marginalized groups — through a glittering series of vignettes including “Yankee Doodle,” minstrel numbers, the Carousel aria “Soliloquy,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” lesbian anthems from the ’90s and much, much more. Mac spent six years performing the show in small chunks around the world before mounting it as a one-time endurance test that ranked among 2016’s most acclaimed cultural events.
A mere 650 people got to witness Mac’s feat live, but thanks to Oscar-winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, about the large-scale project that memorialized AIDS victims), it’s been condensed and preserved via HBO.
A mere 650 people got to witness Mac’s feat live, but thanks to Oscar-winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt, about the large-scale project that memorialized AIDS victims), it’s been condensed and preserved via HBO.
- 6/4/2024
- by Matthew Jacobs
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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