BARK OF MILLIONS New Rock Opera From Taylor Mac, Matt Ray, And Machine Dazzle Makes US Premiere At BAM, February 5- 10

A powerhouse collective of International Artists ignite an  electrifying collision of performance, live music, and drag spectacle in the latest from theater making renegades Taylor Mac, Matt Ray, and Machine Dazzle.

Part rock opera, part reimagined  pride parade, Bark of Millions features 55 original songs—one to mark each year since the  landmark Stonewall Uprising each honoring a queer icon from Claude Cahun to Oscar Wilde— in an exploration of humanity through a queer lens. 

Co-directed by Taylor Mac with the award-winning visionaries Niegel Smith and Faye Driscoll (A  24-Decade History of Popular Music), and with the extravagance of Machine Dazzle's costume  design, this joyous epic is brought to life by an international ensemble of 22 artists. 

Bark of Millions is a transformative and joyful experience that is both a celebration of and a gift  to the queer canon, expanding the archive for generations to come. 

Taylor Mac (co-creator, lyrics, co-director, ensemble) is the first American to receive the  International Ibsen Award, is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a Tony nominee for  Best Play, and the recipient of the Kennedy Prize (with Matt Ray), the Doris Duke Performing  Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert Award, a Drama League Award, the Helen Merrill  Playwriting Award, the Booth, two Helpmann Awards, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, two  Obie's, two Bessies, and an Ethyl Eichelberger. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is the  author of The Hang (with composer Matt Ray); Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus; A 24- Decade History of Popular Music; Prosperous Fools; The Fre; Hir; The Walk Across America for  Mother Earth; The Lily's Revenge; The Young Ladies Of; Red Tide Blooming; The Be(A)st of  Taylor Mac; and the revues Comparison is Violence; Holiday Sauce; and The Last Two People  on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville (created with Mandy Patinkin and Susan Stroman). 

Matt Ray (co-creator, music, music director, keyboards) is an Obie Award-winning theater maker, composer, pianist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and music director. His arrangements  have been called “wizardly” (Time Out NY) and “ingenious” (The New York Times), and his  piano playing referred to as “classic, well-oiled swing” (The New York Times) and “to cry for”  (Ebony). For his work on Taylor Mac's show A 24-Decade History of Popular Music he and Mac  shared the 2017 Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired By American History. He and Mac's jazz based theater piece The Hang opened to rave reviews in January of 2022 and won Ray a 2023  Obie Award for Music Direction and Composition. The show also received four Drama Desk and  two Drama League nominations including a Drama Desk nomination for Matt Ray for Best  Music. His show Matt Ray Plays Hoagy Carmichael featuring Kat Edmonson premiered at  Lincoln Center's American Songbook series in 2018. He has performed worldwide, including as  a US Department of State Jazz Ambassador. 

Beloved downtown bon vivant and all-around creative provocateur Machine Dazzle (costume  designer, ensemble) has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performance since his  arrival in New York in 1994. He designs intricate, unconventional wearable art pieces and  bespoke installations. As a stage designer, Dazzle has collaborated with Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art  Group, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Taylor Mac, Basil Twist, Godfrey Reggio, Jennifer Miller, The  Dazzle Dancers, Big Art Group, Mike Albo, Stanley Love, Soomi Kim, Pig Iron Theatre  Company, Opera Philadelphia, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, the Curran Theatre, and 

Spiegelworld; and has created bespoke looks for fashion icons including designer Diane von  Furstenberg and model Cara Delevingne for the 2019 Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala. Recent  collaborations include Bassline Fabulous with the Catalyst Quartet (Metropolitan Museum of  Art); Treasure, a rock-and-roll cabaret of original songs + accompanying fashion show; and the  historic premiere of the never-before-seen Rameau comedic opéra-ballet, Io (Opera Lafayette).  He was a co-recipient the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design, the winner of a  2017 Henry Hewes Design Award, and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow. Dazzle delivered a  TED Talk at TED Vancouver in 2023. He has had solo exhibitions at NYC's Museum of Arts and  Design (“Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle”) and Toronto's Harbourfront Centre (“Machine  Dazzle: Art And Intention”). 

“LGBTQ Artists Archive Project: Downtown NYC Innovators 2023”

Feb 5–June 30 

Rudin Family Gallery 

651 Fulton Street 

Brooklyn, NY 

Free 

This exhibition honors the work of pioneering LGBTQ downtown NYC artists that flourished and  had an indelible impact on New York City's culture over the past 35+ years. Artists including  Five Lesbian Brothers, Ain Gordon, Ishmael Houston Jones, John Kelly, Richard Move,  Lola Pashalinski, and Carmelita Tropicana will be a part of this comprehensive look at of a  generation that blossomed during a period that could be regarded as the last gasp of physical  bohemia–a rich and highly influential era–which later coincided with the AIDS pandemic,  depleting their ranks and diminishing their collective voices. 

“The LGBTQ Artists Archive Project” is a response to the challenges of preservation that have  plagued these avant-garde artists, many having their art, archives and material thrown away  after they've died – their stories, work, and legacies forgotten. The caretaking of individual  artists' legacies is often left to prohibitive costs and/or ill-equipped friends and family members  with devastating results, erasing their contributions leaving a selective history. This exhibition  will celebrate and acknowledge the LGBTQ artists over the last 50 years who have faced  enormous obstacles and have made extraordinary aesthetic contributions that created, in part,  today's evolving performing arts landscape. 

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