Sierra Boggess and More to Lead Taylor Mac's PROSPEROUS FOOLS at TFANA

Theatre for a New Audience will present Taylor Mac’s Prosperous Fools (June 1–29), directed by Darko Tresnjak. Prosperous Fools, very loosely inspired by Moliere’s 17TH Century classic Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, is a comedy of manners for an age with no manners. This dizzying satire unfolds during the leadup to a gala for an American not-for-profit dance company rehearsing excerpts from a ballet. Mac and a powerhouse ensemble cast perform a carnivalesque play within a play lampooning cultural philanthropy.
 
Prosperous Fools’ company features seven actors, four dancers, and three musicians: Sierra Boggess (the original Ariel in The Little Mermaid on Broadway, School of Rock, The Phantom of the Opera) as ####-###, Kaliswa Brewster (Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Billions) as Intern, Aerina DeBoer (Ragtime, The Hunt, Étoile) as Pot-Bellied Child, Megumi Iwama (Nutcracker Rouge, Seven Sins, Ain’t Done Bad) as Muse #2, Taylor Mac (Bark of Millions, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Orlando) as Artist, Jason O'Connell (Pride and Prejudice, Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Judgment Day) as $#@%$, Ian Paget (Soul Doctor, Leap of Faith, Mamma Mia!) as Prometheus Dancer, Jennifer Regan (Born Yesterday, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, How I Learned to Drive) as Philanthropoid, Cara Seymour (The Metropolitan Opera Ballet) as Muse #3, Jennifer Smith (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Anastasia, Cabaret) as Stage Manager, and Em Stockwell (Company XIV) as Muse #1.
 
The creative team is Oran Eldor (Composer), Austin Mccormick (Choreographer), Alexander Dodge (Scenic Designer), Anita Yavich (Costume Designer), Matthew Richards (Lighting Designer), Jane Shaw (Sound Designer), Aaron Rhyne (Video Designer), Andrew Wade (Voice Director), Jonno Knust (Properties Supervisor), Rocio Mendez (Fight Choreographer), Tom Watson (Hair & Wig Designer), and Jonathan Kalb (Production Dramaturg).
 
As an author and performer, MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize finalist Mac counterbalances irreverence and heart, ridiculousness and gravity. Mac’s “moving, witty, extravagant exercise in pure pleasure and spectacle” (The Guardian) Bark of Millions featured a song for every year of post-Stonewall queer history. The 24-hour A 24-Decade History of Popular Music was deemed by Wesley Morris “one of the great experiences of [his] life” in The New York Times. Morris continued, “An entire day of all that prowess, energy and virtuosity would have been astounding. But Mac is also a devastatingly intelligent artist of conflation. Spending 24 hours filtering 240 years of predominantly American music…through the prerogatives of a drag show is daring. The 24-Decade project was, at least in part, about becoming who we Americans want to be, by recognizing who we have been. It’s about artistic confrontation, reinterpretation, and personal transcendence.”
 
With a different toolbox—an ensemble cast embodying the show’s spectrum of comedy genres (satire, farce, slapstick, clown show, and even mime act)—and a keen focus on the arts’ place in a system where the act of giving insulates avarice, Mac’s Prosperous Fools creates a pageant of sycophancy, desperation, and survival. But just as 24 Decade considered “who we Americans want to be,” Mac’s Prosperous Fools is likewise rooted in a gesture of hope about our future—harnessing queasy comedy to embolden transformative conversation. In Prosperous Fools, the artist takes on the role of the Artist, engaging in a giddy tug-of-war between ambition and principle while preparing the premiere of a dance performance honoring a billionaire (played by Jason O'Connell) and a humanitarian celebrity (played by Sierra Boggess).
 

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