Taylor Mac News

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.

Picture if you will, the classic American family. A son in the military, a tomboyish daughter, a typical housewife mom, a Joe-the-Plumber father.  But in Taylor Mac's subversive and outrageous comedy, HIR, this archetypal group gets completely turned inside-out in a 5-week regional premiere run at Stage West beginning Thursday, May 17.

Picture if you will, the classic American family. A son in the military, a tomboyish daughter, a typical housewife mom, a Joe-the-Plumber father.  But in Taylor Mac's subversive and outrageous comedy, HIR, this archetypal group gets completely turned inside-out in a 5-week regional premiere run at Stage West beginning Today, May 17.

Performance Space New York's East Village Series, the first themed series under the leadership of Executive Artistic Director Jenny Schlenzka, has reexamined the audacious origins of the organization and the communities that formed around it. In 1986, choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, composer/guitarist Chris Cochrane, writer Dennis Cooper, and an ensemble of dancers performed the first full version of THEM, an unblinking interdisciplinary work of scored improvisational dance, spoken text, and guitar, at what was then Performance Space 122.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, in a co-presentation with Pomegranate Arts, is thrilled to announce the special guest artists who will perform in Taylor Mac's ambitious, internationally acclaimed work A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Local Philadelphia performance artists and musicians will join Mac in these final U.S. performances of the full, 24-hour-long pop odyssey, June 2 & 9 at the Kimmel Center's Merriam Theater, as part of the 2018 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA). Mac will perform A 24-Decade History of Popular Music as two distinct 12-hour concerts, Saturday, June 2 (1776-1896) and Saturday, June 9 (1896-present day) - Mac's longest continuous performances since the work premiered at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2016.

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, in a co-presentation with Pomegranate Arts, is thrilled to announce the special guest artists who will perform in Taylor Mac's ambitious, internationally acclaimed work A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Local Philadelphia performance artists and musicians will join Mac in these final U.S. performances of the full, 24-hour-long pop odyssey, June 2 & 9 at the Kimmel Center's Merriam Theater, as part of the 2018 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA). Mac will perform A 24-Decade History of Popular Music as two distinct 12-hour concerts, Saturday, June 2 (1776-1896) and Saturday, June 9 (1896-present day) - Mac's longest continuous performances since the work premiered at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2016.

The U.S. Premiere of Toshiki Okada's Time's Journey Through a Room opens this Sunday, May 20, at the Mezzanine Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres. Presented by The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert G. Bradshaw, Time's Journey Through a Room is PlayCo's third collaboration with Okada, translator Aya Ogawa and director Dan Rothenberg. This haunting play, set in Japan after the Fukushima disaster, stars the Japanese-born, New York based performers 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. 

Playwright and performer Taylor Mac once said: "Theater reminds an audience of the things they've forgotten, dismissed, or buried or that others have buried for them. It unearths. It brings the conversation you aren't having with yourself into the room." Such is the case with Raleigh Little Theatre's world premiere ensemble version of Blood Done Sign My Name. The play by Mike Wiley, adapted from the memoir by Timothy Tyson, looks the "brutal history" of Oxford, NC in the eye during a time when the quaint town became a battleground for racial equity and social justice. Just as Hamilton informed how people have come to understand American History, Wiley's Blood Done Sign My Name moves audiences to face North Carolina's past in a way that is palatable, accessible, and thought-provoking, which is good, because this is one history lesson you don't want to miss.

Shakespeare & Company presents the New England Premiere of Morning After Grace written by Cary Crim, and directed by Regge Life who helmed last season's hit comedy God of Carnage. Morning After Grace is an unconventional new comedy tackling love, loss, and second chances. Performances run from May 24th - July 15th in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre.

Picture if you will, the classic American family. A son in the military, a tomboyish daughter, a typical housewife mom, a Joe-the-Plumber father.  But in Taylor Mac's subversive and outrageous comedy, HIR, this archetypal group gets completely turned inside-out in a 5-week regional premiere run at Stage West beginning Thursday, May 17.

Goodman Theatre announces the cast and creative team for the Chicago premiere of Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Niegel Smith. Parks, in her "finest work yet" (New York Times), serves up "an American story as much about our present as it is about our past" (Los Angeles Times). Filled with wit, poetry and original music composed by Grammy Award winner Justin Ellington and performed on stage nightly by Chicago native blues musician Melody Angel, the production follows Hero (Kamal Angelo Bolden), a Texas slave, who faces a simple yet monumental choice: join his master in the Confederate army to win his freedom-or remain enslaved at the plantation. Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) appears May 25 - June 24, 2018 (opening night is June 4 at 7pm) in Goodman Theatre's 350-seat flexible Owen Theatre. The estimated run time is 2 hours and 30 minutes. Tickets ($10 - $40; subject to change) are available at GoodmanTheatre.org/Father , by phone at 312.443.3800 or at the box office (170 N. Dearborn). The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation is the Major Production Sponsor and American Airlines is the Contributing Sponsor.

Performance Space New York continues its East Village Series' examination of the history, assessment of the present, and radical gaze into the future of the neighborhood in which it was founded and has boldly returned this season. Autonomous, anti-capitalist, gender self-determining collective BRUJAS-who build revolutionary political coalition through youth culture, and express community through skateboarding, art, and political organizing-will be in residence at Performance Space New York from May 25-June 9. With their project, Training Facility, they have enlisted industrial designer Jonathan Olivares to transform the organization's new theater into a skate park and intimate meet-up spot. On May 25, as part of Red Bull Music Festival, the collective will throw their third annual Anti-Prom in the space, kicking off their residency with the gender-queering party described by the New York Times as 'an effervescent celebration of people usually sidelined by traditional prom culture.' Or, as BRUJAS co-founder Arianna Gil herself has described it, 'the Met-Gala of the underground.'

Performance Space New York continues its East Village Series' examination of the history, assessment of the present, and radical gaze into the future of the neighborhood in which it was founded and has boldly returned this season. Autonomous, anti-capitalist, gender self-determining collective BRUJAS-who build revolutionary political coalition through youth culture, and express community through skateboarding, art, and political organizing-will be in residence at Performance Space New York from May 25-June 9.

Legendary Downtown New York artist Penny Arcade is now 50 years into a career in which she continues to turn a mirror back on society with highly original and entertaining investigations into the human condition that perhaps best described as cultural criticism you can dance to. She revives her international hit Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!: The Penny Arcade Sex and Censorship Show, May 11-19 at Performance Space New York, as part of the institution's East Village Series.

Continuing a long tradition of presenting world-class performances to The University of Texas at Austin and the Central Texas community, Texas Performing Arts unveils the 2018-19 Essential Series season. This is the 10th since the renovation of Bass Concert and changing our name to Texas Performing Arts.

UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) today unveiled its 2018-19 season lineup honoring heritage artists and featuring pioneering champions for social justice and diverse world views in bold programs by leading innovators and acknowledged masters in contemporary dance, music, theater and spoken word.

The Playwrights' Center today announced the recipients of the 2018-19 McKnight National Residency and Commission and 2018-19 McKnight Fellowships in Playwriting.

Since 2004, director Mallory Catlett has worked across disciplines to expand the boundaries of theater. Through original works with her own company, Restless NYC, and collaborations with some of today's leading artists-composer Mika Karlsson (The Echo Drift), Dread Scott (Decision), Aaron Landsman (City Council Meeting & Perfect City)-Catlett creates theater that The New York Times calls "lurid, feverish and powerful." She has been called a "downtown treasure" by Time Out New York.

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.

The winners of the 2018 New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards will be announced Thursday, May 3, 2018 at approximately 5:30pm. The selections will be made at the organization's 83rd annual voting meeting.