Taylor Mac is a MacArthur Fellow, playwright, and uses the pronoun “judy.” Judy’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music was an epic 24-hour long concert in which I was a backing vocalist (as well as performing some minor roles, like one of the “three little maids from school” in a Martian adaptation of the Mikado called “The Marskado”). Each hour of the concert featured popular songs from each decade of The United States of America’s history, starting in 1776 and ending in 2016. The show has been performed in many iterations, sometimes in 3-hour chunks, sometimes 6, but only once in a 24-hour marathon performance, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in October of 2016. At that performance, I performed for 15 of the 24-hours, with some breaks, and many costume changes.
I also had the privilege of performing versions of the show at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, as well as at the Melbourne Festival in Australia.
Below you can see one of my many backing vocalist lqqks, as well as a clip of me singing a duet with Taylor in an early version of the piece at Joe’s Pub.
PRESS:
New York Times, "Review: Taylor Mac’s 24-Hour Concert Was One of the Great Experiences of My Life" — Wesley Morris, October 2016
The Guardian, "Taylor Mac review – 24-hour-long pop show is everything" — Alex Needham
New York Times, "The Gaudy, Glittery, Gorgeously Subversive World of Taylor Mac" – Alexandra Jacobs, September 2016
The Guardian, "The 50 Best Theatre Shows of the 21st Century" – September 2019
