Taylor Mac News

Encores! Off-Center, New York City Center's popular summer musical theater series, continues next week with Gone Missing. John Behlmann, Susan Blackwell, Aysan Celik, Deborah S. Craig, Taylor Mac, and David Ryan Smith will star in the special two-night-only engagement, presented in honor of composer and 2017 Encores! Artistic Director Michael Friedman.

Shakespeare & Company presents August Strindberg's dark comedy Creditors, adapted by critically acclaimed playwright David Greig and directed by Nicole Ricciardi of last season's hit show 4000 Miles. In this production of what Strindberg calls his 'most mature work,' three characters must face their past, confronting love, debt, and deception. Performances run from July 19 - August 12 in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre.

Shakespeare & Company host its annual Fourth of July Community Celebration "We Hold These Truths" on their property at 70 Kemble Street, Lenox MA. This yearly event is an all-American Independence Day celebration with music, food, children's crafts and activities, and a public reading of one of the most stirring, and influential documents in our country's history, The Declaration of Independence.

With THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART and BORDERS, Spoleto Festival USA took advantage of the funky and guerilla potentials of the Woolfe Street Playhouse, but the best theatre this year was THE FLYING LOVERS OF VITEBSK, which brought a little cabaret ambiance to storied Dock Street Theatre.

Performance Space New York closes out its by-turns pensive, provocative, and radically festive East Village Series with The Independence Day Ball, a Kiki ball from the organization's neighbors at Alliance for Positive Change (June 29).

Shakespeare & Company presents William Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Obie Award-winning director Melia Bensussen. Company veterans Jonathan Croy and Tod Randolph take the helm as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, two of Shakespeare's most notorious anti-heroes. Shakespeare's stunning classic of blind ambition and corrosive power runs from July 3 - August 5 in the Tina Packer Playhouse.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts announces the full list of activities and vendors that will fill Broad Street during the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) finale Street Fair. Taking place from Chestnut Street to Lombard Street today, June 9, 2018 from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Broad Street will once again transform into the ultimate FREE block party culminating the 10-day festival curated by the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. This year, Philadelphians will have the opportunity to create and sail their own paper boat down a river on Broad Street, ride the beloved Ferris Wheel, take a thrilling virtual reality swing ride, be amazed by the flying French airship Aeroplume, marvel at the Olympic style diving show, enjoy performances from local groups, and much more. 

Trustus closes HIR while CCT breaks out the COMMEDIA!

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts announces the full list of activities and vendors that will fill Broad Street during the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) finale Street Fair. Taking place from Chestnut Street to Lombard Street on Saturday, June 9, 2018 from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Broad Street will once again transform into the ultimate FREE block party culminating the 10-day festival curated by the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. This year, Philadelphians will have the opportunity to create and sail their own paper boat down a river on Broad Street, ride the beloved Ferris Wheel, take a thrilling virtual reality swing ride, be amazed by the flying French airship Aeroplume, marvel at the Olympic style diving show, enjoy performances from local groups, and much more. 

Unicorn Theatre bills itself as a venue for "Bold New Plays."  Its current production, 2014s "Hir" (pronounced "Here") by the playwright Taylor Mac certainly fits in with that expressed goal.  Hir" bills itself as a dark family comedy performed as absurd reality.  It is funny in places and tragic in others.  It blows up traditional values in favor of being on the leading edge of change. 

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, today announces the complete cast for Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room, marking PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa, and director Dan Rothenberg, May 10 - June 10, 2018. This haunting play, set in post-Fukushima Japan, will star three Japanese born performers, all of whom are now based in New York: Yuki Kawahisa (Honoka), Maho Honda (Arisa) and Kensaku Shinohara (Kazuki). The play is both an intimate examination of how we move forward from life-altering events, and a study of how we experience time, asking whether we can ever be alive to the present moment. 

More than a dark comedy about gender, HIR is set to make its debut on Trustus Theatre's Main Stage this June as the theatre continues to bring thought-provoking, conversation-starting pieces to their Season 33, "Eyes Open." This play will open in Trustus Theatre's Side Door Theatre today, June 1 and will have a limited run through Saturday, June 9. Tickets may be purchased at www.trustus.org, or by calling the Trustus Box Office at 803-254-9732.

Troupe Vertigo, a Los Angeles-based circus-dance-theater company whose spellbinding performances ignite the imagination, joins the San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) in the San Francisco Premiere of Tableaux. Directed and choreographed by Aloysia Gavre and produced by Rex Camphuis-the wife and husband team who co-founded Troupe Vertigo in 2009-Tableaux incorporates an all-female cast of contortionists, dancers, and acrobats whose vertical landscapes challenge audiences with the meaning of confinement and freedom as the artists explore societal controversies through movement.

Millennial messiah, Brigham Mosley, is regressing.  The world is a Sisyphus-ian nightmare and this drag queen just wants to braid your hair.  Can refuge from the present only be found in the past?  In the tradition of Taylor Mac, Dallas performance artist Brigham Mosley brings drag and drama to Stage West as a special one-night event on Wednesday, June 13 in conjunction with the theatre's production of Hir.

The weather is heating up and the Midlands are slowing down, but there's still plenty of theatre in town to take in!

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts' management announced its 2018 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) lineup Friday afternoon during an event at the Kimmel Center's Hamilton Garden. With over 50 performances ranging from music and dance to 360-degree immersive spectacle experiences, the 2018 festival raises the proverbial PIFA bar, showcasing critically-acclaimed work that has captivated critics and garnered awards nationally and internationally. Known for its engaging performances curated by The Kimmel Center from around the globe, the festival was first developed in 2011 drawing increasing audiences locally and attracting regional visitors seeking out the ultimate Philly experience. The 2018 festival runs Today, May 31 through Sunday, June 10.

Encores! Off-Center Co-Artistic Directors Anne Kauffman and Jeanine Tesori today announced casting for New York City Center's popular summer musical theater series Encores! Off-Center.

Chaos reigns supreme in this hilarious reinvention of the classic American family drama. When Isaac returns home from Afghanistan to help take care of his ailing father, he discovers a household in revolt. His mother, Paige, has been liberated from an oppressive marriage, and with the help of her newly "out" transgender teen is passionately dismantling the patriarchy. But in Taylor Mac's shocking and subversive comedy, even the most radical changes can't always free you from the past.

More than a dark comedy about gender, HIR is set to make its debut on Trustus Theatre's Main Stage this June as the theatre continues to bring thought-provoking, conversation-starting pieces to their Season 33, "Eyes Open." This play will open in Trustus Theatre's Side Door Theatre on Friday, June 1 and will have a limited run through Saturday, June 9. Tickets may be purchased at www.trustus.org, or by calling the Trustus Box Office at 803-254-9732.