TAYLOR MAC'S HOLIDAY SAUCE…BOOSTER! Virtual Premiere Announced

Since its premiere in 2017, the Pomegranate Arts production Taylor Mac's Holiday Sauce has become a beloved annual tradition-perhaps the most subversive and cathartic event of the season. In it, Mac, longtime collaborators, and surprise special guests come together to celebrate the holidays in all their dysfunction, blending music, film, burlesque, and random acts of fabulousness. In Mac's world, there's more to the holidays than rampant gift-giving, and creativity and imagination are their own spirituality.

Last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way of touring plans, Mac (who uses "judy" as a gender pronoun) and Pomegranate reimagined Holiday Sauce as "a virtual vaudeville," convening cultural institutions worldwide to commission and broadcast the event to Mac's international community. Just as, within the show, Mac reminds us of the collective power of our chosen families, London's Barbican this year invites fans worldwide to gather their chosen families to watch the 2021 edition, Taylor Mac's Holiday Sauce...Booster!, on Dec 10, 17, or 24 at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST. Pomegranate Arts makes the show available to view on-demand beginning December 24 at 5pm EST. Those in the New York / New Jersey area can purchase tickets to be part of the live studio audience when Taylor and the band film the show, hosted by the Jersey City Theater Center, December 8, at 6pm and 9 pm at the White Eagle Music Hall. A portion of all on-demand sales benefit the LGBT Asylum Task Force.

To create Holiday Sauce...Booster!, Mac has once again joined forces with creative producer Pomegranate Arts (Linda Brumbach, Founder and Director; Alisa E. Regas, Managing Director, Creative), production director Jeremy Lydic, designers Machine Dazzle and Anastasia Durasova, and cinematographer Rob Kolodny. It features a full band led music director/arranger Matt Ray and including Bernice "Boom Boom" Brooks, Viva DeConcini, Greg Glassman, J. Walter Hawkes, Marika Hughes, Dana Lyn, and Gary Wang; special guests including Thornetta Davis; and performers who make cameo appearances, such as Glenn Marla as Sexual Consent Santa. In 2021, the show features new songs by Mac (and a new look by Machine Dazzle) and all the fan favorites from yesteryear, including Mac's "Christmas with Grandma," animated by Dana Lyn, and Machine Dazzle's interior monologue of a Christmas Tree, "Surprise Destiny."

Mac dedicates Holiday Sauce to Mother Flawless Sabrina, judy's drag mother, who passed away three weeks before the live show made its world premiere at Town Hall NYC in December 2017. The Barbican and the Jersey City Theater Center will select local Queens to honor as part of this year's Holiday Sauce...Booster, for the significant contributions they have made to nurturing the queer community in their cities.

Holiday Sauce was commissioned by Pomegranate Arts/Nature's Darlings and The International Ibsen Festival, The Norwegian Ministry of Culture, and The National Theatre of Oslo, and developed with additional support from the Ancram Opera House, the Park Avenue Armory, and the Barbican.

Audiences worldwide can enjoy Holiday Sauce throughout the season by listening to the acclaimed album of the same, produced and arranged by director Matt Ray and released in 2020 by Favorite Fruit, a new company established by Pomegranate Arts. The record brightens the time of year we hate with unique renditions of songs we love: traditionals including "God Rest Ye Gentlemen," "How Can I Keep from Singing?," "Little Drummer Boy," and "Silent Night"; covers such as Graham Nash's "Cathedral," the Velvet Underground's "The Black Angel's Death Song" and "All Tomorrow's Parties." and Frank Ocean's "Super Rich Kids," and the Mac original "Christmas with Grandma." It is available on all streaming platforms.

For tickets to Holiday Sauce...Booster!, and for more information about the show and the album, please visit www.TaylorMacHolidaySauce.com.

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