 Okay, oh, it's on now. Okay, hello everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for coming. My name's Jamie Galoon. I'm the interim director for HowlRound, a free and open platform for theater makers worldwide, and we're so happy that you're here with us today. I'm gonna give you a little bit of context about why we're all in this room together. Since 2012, HowlRound has, in partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, helped administer a program called the National Playwright Residency Program. And through this program, 18 playwrights are salaried staff members in residence for three years at theaters around the country. And we're currently in the middle of the second round of the program. The goal of this program is to, one, advance the state of the playwrights in the American theater by providing them space, time, and resources. Two, to influence the working environment of theaters by embedding playwrights in them, by making playwrights a part of the staff full-time. Three, to help the field, including other funders outside of the Mellon Foundation, understand the value of embedding playwrights within an institution. And four, to work toward an ideal of having writers become salaried employees at all theaters, which fundamentally is about trying to pay artists equitably for their work. So HowlRound, where we come in, is we're responsible for documenting the activities of this program. So we regularly have conferences with the playwrights and artistic directors here at Emerson. In fact, our next one is coming up in March. And we also report out on activities of the residencies via the HowlRound Journal, via HowlRound TV, and all of the normal tools of our platform. And as well as, in addition, we also have one-week developmental residencies that playwrights participate in throughout the course of the program. So this past week, we were lucky enough to have Taylor here working on a new piece with us, which is why we're all here. So I'll just do brief introductions, although I'm sure they aren't necessarily needed, but here we are. So Taylor is a playwright, actor, singer, songwriter, performance artist, director, and producer. Notable works include a 24-decade history of popular music, which was the 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Here, which is being produced around the country, and The Lily's Revenge, which was produced in Cambridge at the ART in 2012. Taylor is a MacArthur Fellow and the resident playwright at Here Art Center in New York City. So Taylor is joined today by Kristin Martin, Artistic Director of Here Art Center in New York. Kristin is a director of hybrid work who has premiered pieces at Here, Bam, and Soho Wrap, among others, and whose work has toured extensively. She co-founded and is co-artistic director of the Prototype Opera Theater Festival. She is also a political activist and lecturer. Taylor and Kristin are joined by Machine Dazzle. Machine Dazzle is, I quote, an American long-legged award-winning designer. Machine has been collaborating with Taylor since 2004, first on The Lily's Revenge, and has worked with many other folks in the theater. So Kristin, Taylor, and Machine have graciously agreed to be here with us this afternoon to talk both about Taylor's residency at Here, their own work, and the concept of artistic home. We'll hear from Taylor, Kristin, and Machine first, and then we'll open it up to questions from the audience. And it's important to note that we're live streaming this event on HowlRoundTV, which is why we're using microphones, so that the sound quality is good, so please bear with us. When we get to Q and A, we will ask you to come up to the mic and ask your question. Thank you all for being here and take it away. Hi, everybody. Fun to see you all. Taylor. Yes. So your work always resonates to the right now. So how is it that you zero in on what you're gonna write on at a particular time? Oh, well, I think it's, you know, that's my job, you know? The job is to pay attention to what's happening in the world, to listen. So you spend, hopefully, most of your time listening so that you can have 90 minutes to 24 hours. My time. So, and hopefully, if it's really good, you're sharing your time with other people. And so that's, I guess that's, that's, you know, like this play, Gary, a sequel to Titus Andronicus, we're working on it for a while, and we're gonna hopefully do it in the fall of 2019. So that's two years of listening to how the world is shaping up to the themes that are in the play. And I guess that's the main way. I tend to, I tend to make work where that always changes. It's often there's a huge element in every single performance that changes. I don't know if this play will have that moment, but I think it will because of the machine that we're making, no pun intended. But, The machine that machine is making? Yeah, exactly. So, I think that is, that's a way that the work is always responding to this moment. One of the things I learned by being a touring artist is how to perform the same show in a tent one night, especially the kind of touring artists that I am. And the kind of work I was making earlier in my career, which was just me and my ukulele. So it was really easy to just show up and be like, oh, it's an opera house tonight. Oh, it's a tent. Oh, it's a club. It's a gallery. Oh, it's a, you know, and so you really learned how to perform for different spaces and what the space does to the same piece of work. And also sometimes it would be the matinee performance. Sometimes it would be a midnight show. Sometimes you're in a community like Boston where people sit politely and listen the entire time. And sometimes you're in an environment where everyone's screaming from the very get go. And so it's just like learning how to listen to the room and learning how to listen to the world and how it is affecting the room is, that's the job, I think. So that's a long way of saying yes. I've seen you adapt work on the fly in the moment in response to the audience. And I know you think a lot about audience and community and how you're making your work and that relationship. Could you talk a little bit about how you came to the place of being so interested in engaging the audience more than as passive viewers? Yeah, I was just talking to Travis about this, our wonderful assistant here. I was in acting school and we got free tickets to see Full Moon on Broadway, this David Shiner and Bill Irwin piece where they had an audience participation moment in it. This is in the early 90s and I went to it about 40 times because we kept getting free tickets, you know, that was. And I was fascinated with how the patterns of the audience participation and the variety of what happens when you bring non-professionals up on a stage and try to make it so that what they do becomes a dramatic event of your play. And I had this conscious thought that what I wanted to do, was try to do that for the whole audience. How can I make the whole audience responsible for the dramatic event of the play rather than one or two participants that come up? So I mean, I think they really inspired it. And so then I started trying to incorporate it in my work but what I found is that I didn't have the craft for it and I didn't have the improv skills. I had the Meisner technique was about as good of improv skill as I had. So there were many different reasons why I went to the clubs but I went to the clubs and that's where I really learned it. We just saw Lady Bunny last night, it was amazing. So I learned it from people like that, watching people like that do their shows. And I learned doing a number and being terrified and oh, I failed and I stay up all night thinking, oh, I could have said this, I could have said that or I could have done that. And then the next night you go and you perform and then something similar happens and you're like, oh, I have that little piece that I'm part of my Rolodex that I can use now. So you build a craft for improv, but also a craft for, there's only so many variations of things that will happen in a performance. So then you have your Rolodex that you can insert. You really expanded the Rolodex with 24 decade because what you did over that 24 hours of performance and with the audience and all different ways, whether they, couples dancing together who don't know each other and they're the same sex, whether it was being blindfolded for an hour and feeding someone grapes in the blindfoldness, all the different experiences that you put us through and the way that you built a community over those 24 hours. Can you talk a little bit about the process of crafting that and machine, I want you to come in on this too because you were so integral to that project. Do you want to start it? Well, so there we were in 1776 and we needed to make it to 2016. And just in terms of, for the sake of entertainment, things, you're going to transform over that period of time. And so we were going through, we have 24. Oh, it's my fuzzy sweater. Thank you. Do I look better? Okay. And so, you know, it's funny. The way Taylor introduced this play to me, it was, you know, it was absolutely, our last show we had collaborated with, you know, you came to me like, oh, can I have like a 1790s outfit? I think it's 1790s first actually. And I was like, you know, I didn't know that the 24 hour show was coming. And then, you know, like a year later, oh, could I have a 1930s, you know, outfit? And the 1970s outfit while you're at it. You know, so, and then the next time you asked me for a period piece, it was like the 1770s. And then you told me the scope. You really didn't tell me before. And then, and so, oh, we're doing 24 hours, 24 decades, that's 24 costumes. So, you know, what I do is, you know, I have to take care of the audience too. I'm in charge of visuals. And so, every hour the audience gets refreshed with something new to look at that then gets, you know, deconstructed over an hour. Layers come off and one of my, I mean, I like the costumes to have their own stories. I incorporate lots of details for people to look at the whole time or, you know, I love surprises. So, that's what I did. What was your original question? Well, I was actually, I was thinking about the relationship to the audience and the way a community was built over the journey of that piece, both from performance to performance as it was grown, but also within the 24 hour event itself. Right, and so, you know, the audience, you know, becomes deconstructed by the end of that experience. You know, we hand out drag in the first hour. People are, you know, people are welcome to wear drag, you know, and change themselves over the 24 hours. I don't know. I'm part of, I would change Taylor in front of everyone in my own costumes. I would change too. I still feel like I'm not really, answering the question. Well, you helped me, Taylor, take it away. Well, just, I mean, we started working. The concept was that we would build it by performing it. So, we didn't really rehearse that much. We would, I would get together with Matt Ray, our musical director and arranger, and we would work on just the song list and a rough kind of understanding of arrangement and ideas, just the two of us. And then, and then we would rehearse with the band after Matt had done a kind of a rough idea of arrangement. We'd rehearse with them for about three hours and machine would show up with the costumes, usually the day of the show, sometimes a half an hour before the show. Sometimes, you know, he would be putting things on me right before I'm entering. A couple times during the show, a new piece would come out, you know. So, when that was designed, it was, you know, expected. That was expected. That's what I wanted to do. And the idea was that we're gonna perform it so many times that the performance becomes the rehearsal. So, that's how we build the audience over many years for it, is that we've created the serial aspect of it, is that, oh, you're building this with us, audience, for a really long time. And so, it wasn't just a 24-hour durational experience. It was, you know, six years and now going on eight. We're still doing that. Okay. And where in the process did you, was it you and Nigel together that would build the audience experiences that would happen in each hour? Was that on you alone? How did that process evolve? Well, the way Nigel and I worked together, is basically Nigel couldn't tour with us the whole time. And I hadn't even met Nigel when we first started working on the piece. So, I would do all that stuff on tour and in at Joe's Pub. And then when Nigel started coming on, you know, the wonderful thing about Nigel is I can't handle the text, you know, because I'm trying to be on the stage. I can't see what's going on. So Nigel really is, we say we're co-directors because he's directing all of the technical aspects and I'm directing the content. And then we kind of share a little bit back and forth with both of those things. So, we would talk about, he would come and see a particular performance and then we talk about it. So he would work a little bit as a dramaturgical director for the first, for most of the development of the piece. He came to Sundance with us and we really hashed it all out at Sundance. And then when we finally got into St. Anne's, that's when Nigel really kind of took charge. And, you know, the way that I work with machine and all the designers, or at least the way I hope to work with them, is that I just say, this is what the idea is. And these are some elements that would be nice to have. Go for it. And then whatever machine makes, I wear. I don't tell machine, no, I need a different color. No, I need, in the most I will say was, please change the hemline. So I'm not tripping, you know? Like that would be, because I don't, machine doesn't tell me how to rewrite my text. So I'm not gonna tell machine how to redesign his costume, you know? It's like the reason I want this mad genius involved in the work is because he's gonna bring something I could never bring to it. So, that's how I prefer to work with him. It's true, it's true. I've worked with you on other projects as well, where you haven't been collaborating with Taylor. But I do think that the joy of watching you guys work together is that this incredible thing is born between the visual sculptures that you create and the way that Taylor transforms them through breath and life. It's really beautiful. And it's a different process though because Taylor is completely accepting of anything that you create. And so your imagination can soar in a way with Taylor that I don't think you necessarily have that same freedom on all of your collaborations. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that? Sure. First of all, well, I'm not really a costume designer. I'm an artist. That's the first thing. I didn't go through a program. I'm completely taught myself how to construct clothing. I never went to a sewing class in my life or a theater class. I learned it in the clubs with Taylor. We would even be on the same bill often at these clubs and bars and stuff. So, I'm an artist in the role of costume designer, visual designer. So, when these days, people get it. But some people, like directors, performers, really need to be in control of everything. I'm not your costume designer. Usually I'm concept-based. I'm idea-based and instinct-based. And I really have a, it's like, okay, that's the text. This is what's going on. This would be great. I create another, I create a whole layer of art in, on the stage for the audience and for the production. So, I work very differently than your regular costume designer. And I don't do stock characters. It's not a part of my vocabulary. And if I do, it's not gonna be, you know, it's gonna be a really unusual version of that stock character. Because that's been done before, you know. I wanna see something different. Don't you? I don't wanna say the same thing over again. So, I was very excited about the 24 decades I got to do period costuming. My way, you know, that was very exciting. You know, it's not, I wasn't disrespecting. I'm not disrespecting the, you know, the classic training of costume designers and all of these things. But, you know, I took, you know, silhouettes into the consideration, but there's so much more, the costume can be so much more than a costume. When we were first workshopping, it was like, you know, we didn't have a proscenium theater. There was no set, there were no props. So, the costume had to be the costume, the set, the props had to be everything. And that's, I don't know, that was how these costumes came about, and that's how I work, you know. So, I'll switch it to you now, because I, so Christian's the artistic director of the Hero Arts Center. And it's the same thing, the building it over many years is the same thing as what you've been doing with here. So, would you mind giving them your basic here spiel of what the theater does and what, yeah. So, we started in 1993, and we were originally a couple of organizations that got together, and we ran non-hierarchically, and we had a structure of including a number of companies right from the beginning. And the idea was that we would all together make a space happen. Things evolved, and lots of drama ensued, and I became the executive director, and I was executive director about 10 years, and then I brought Kim Weitner in as producing director about 10 years ago, and I'm artistic director to her as my partner's producing director now. But we're no longer organizationally collaborative, but we're still a deeply collaborative artist-led space. And we have a resident artist program which supports artists from Inception through Work in Progress Workshop, and then we do full productions and help launch the work on tour. And really, to my knowledge, maybe there was one before, but to my knowledge, at least in New York, it was the first organization that made a commitment to saying to people, oh, it takes more than just a four-week rehearsal period for you to develop your piece, so let's make sure that you have a three-year development at a time if that's what you need. Or sometimes four, Lily took four years. Yeah, or two years. So it's adapted to each artist. Each artist process is completely their own to determine. We don't force anyone to do anything any way. They do it exactly the way they want to, and we follow their lead as an organization in terms of how they wanna do that. We're supporting artists from all disciplines, theater, music, dance, puppetry, and media arts. And these artists each have very different processes. And one of the things that we thought was important was to give them an opportunity to gather. So once a month we have a meeting where the artists show each other work and give each other feedback. And artists have very different ways of talking based on their training. So an artist that is trained as a writer has really different things to say about rhythm than a composer does. So it makes an interesting feedback conversation that happens across the artists working in such different ways. But the program has grown over the years. We started it in 1998, so we're coming up shockingly on almost the 20th anniversary of the program, but we keep expanding in response to what the artists say they need. We keep expanding what we offer to make it as flexible, but also more full-bodied as we can. So we've added things, we recently received funding so that we could expand having the opportunity for the artists to have more time in the theaters with the equipment. So we're doing extended design residencies of about a week long, about six months before a premiere with the whole design team with no pressure of public performance. And everyone is working in that room for a week with all the gear and getting to explore their ideas as a team and then have time to go away and make revisions before we're headed to the full production. We've also extended the tech time now so that most of our shows are teching 10 to 14 days. And feeling like that's really essential to crafting the kind of hybrid work that we're interested in supporting that without this kind of commitment that also includes money for the artists, money for technicians, like all of that being included as part of the development process. We do, as I mentioned, we do works in progress and so those can be a reading if that's what's useful to the artists or it could be that they play two songs that they've written or it could be that they just show a media component of their piece. So we do those works in progress every couple of months. We do workshops every spring. Now we do it February, March-ish. It's called Culture Mart and it's an annual festival of the resident artist's work and they could show 15 minutes of their piece or they could show an hour and a half of their piece. It's whatever is useful. Most of the artists do two or three culture marts as they're growing their work over the years and they do two or three works in progress. We have residency space. We have recently, in the last few years we've been working a lot on Governor's Island. This past summer we had a space for six months so we had eight studios running all summer for six months on Governor's Island so an artist could be in one of the studios for all six months just as much as they wanted to doing whatever they needed to do. So we just keep trying to find what the right configuration is for any given artist that we're working with. Of course the challenge is always having enough resources, having enough cash, that's always the thing that we're pushing for. There is a commission attached to the project but to date now it's a $5,000 developmental commission and then usually we put between, we say it's about a $100,000 residency from the inception of the work through the premiere and then we raise additional money but it's like when we select you for the residency we're committing $100,000 to you and you don't have a project yet. So that's the other thing is that we're not accepting place submissions. We're accepting a concept from an artist and we're looking at their past body of work and the body of work of their collaborators. So they write one page about what the idea is for the project and then we do some interviews with finalists and we select the group that we develop but we're not picking work that already exists so we really take a chance on an artist and on their vision and that's what we get really excited about. When I first worked with, I mean I first worked with you guys as an actor and somebody else's piece and then I was in a festival that you had and then we did a play together and then when I applied for the hard program. Taylor played Orpheus, my Orpheus. Yeah. Stephanie Fleishman wrote the lyrics. And so when I applied for the program it was with this idea of the Lilies Revenge which I thought oh maybe it'll be six actors, 90 minute play about nostalgia and stuff and then I started working on it and I did a workshop where I just sang a song on a ukulele with me. I brought machine in to do a costume so he made me a Lily outfit and we just did that one workshop where I just sang maybe like a 15 minute long song and I was like okay great and then I thought no, no, no, the next time we had a workshop then we had I think maybe eight people involved in it and machine made costumes for that. Rachel Chavkin directed that segment. Yeah, Rachel Chavkin directed that, that's true. And then we and then I thought no, no, no, no, no, it needs to be 36 cast members and we're gonna make it five hours long and so this thing that I had applied for which was gonna be kind of manageable turned into this impossible for an off-off Broadway production. It was kind of impossible and no one was doing that kind of size for a while, I don't think, downtown. But the Heroin Center was just the entire time they just went okay, okay, like five hours, 36 people, yeah, okay, you know, and everyone else was saying oh Taylor, no, don't do that, don't do that. But they just kept encouraging it and so that's something if you can find when you go out into the world, you're pretty lucky. So anyway, I just wanna give the little props where the props are due, sure. So I wanna go back to talking a little bit about generosity because that's something that I think is, I would say the main character in your work. It's something that, there's something about a generosity of you as a performer and in the way that you see people around you and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Oh gosh. I don't, I mean, the only way I think I can live in the world, I guess I've always felt like growing up, I was told I wasn't supposed to have a say in the culture because of my queerness. And so, and so when I was like, I'm gonna chisel space for myself in the world and I did that for a while with the solo shows and I thought that that was interesting and I like doing it but there was something, I thought the best actual way to chisel some space for myself in the culture is to chisel space for other people as well. So it's a little selfish. It's maybe not as generous as it might seem and yet it is generous. I mean, I'm not poo-pooing it. I just think that there's, I was like, how can, I don't know how to be in the world if I'm not in the world with other people, right? So the ideas got bigger and the shows got bigger and I don't, I was making my costumes before I met Machine and they were fine. They were basically a more kind of dumber version of not knowing what to do so doing my own thing than what you were doing and it was fine but once I brought Machine in it was, I mean, once we started collaborating together it transformed everything so I just feel like the great theater is the most collaborative art from there is and if you don't want your vision to change you shouldn't work in the theater and so I have a vision and I go, ah, here it is and then Machine comes in with a totally different outfit and I go, oh, okay, that's the vision now. And because I bring my vision to it he brings his vision to it and we make something greater than and then we bring our vision to you and they hear our center and we all make it all together and it just is better than what it could be as individuals. So I guess there's, and I feel that way about the audience as well if I don't invite them into the piece the piece can't be what it needs to be so it's always about the invitation to try to get people involved and engaged and considering and participating even if they're not actually doing audience participation. One of the things that you've talked a lot about and you were just talking about a little bit here is this idea of creating alternate histories in your work and alternate ways for us to see the things that have happened, alternate colors or lights that we're putting on things. Do you wanna talk about that a little? Well, I'm not like fake news and I'm not talking about fake news. No, I know, I know, I know you're not. Yeah, yeah, I guess it's alternative news which is different from fake news. Alternative news would be the news that you don't hear about, I suppose. So it always pisses me off when he talks about that. I'm like, all we hear is your point of view. You're gonna tell us we're not hearing it every day? But anyways, so Fox News is the most watched news station in America and suddenly their point of view isn't being heard. So it drives me crazy and it drives me crazy in American theater when everyone says that there's not a voice for conservatives. I'm like, every show I see feels like a conservative voice. Telling Mama Mia isn't trying to hand feed just something conservative, you know, like, I mean, you know. So that drives me a little crazy. You go down the list, like every single show. Even Hamilton has given you a conservative pilot, I think. So I'm just saying it's about a capitalist. So I get frustrated by that and I don't know, I got distracted by my ire. But, yeah, that's, what was your question? Alternative history. Oh, alternative histories. Revealing things, illuminating things. Yeah, we say in the show that I'm not a teacher. I don't want to be a teacher. I don't know how to teach people. I've tried teaching workshops, I'm really bad at it. I love teachers, thank you. I wish I could be better at it. I am a reminder. So I figure everybody, not everybody, but most of the people in the audience know just as much about the subject I'm talking about as I do. Maybe I know a little bit more because I spend time researching it in order to make a show. But I don't, I created 24 decade harshly because I went to public school and I didn't learn good history, which isn't a trash public school, but I went to a bad one. So I didn't learn public, I didn't learn US history. I wanted to be the kind of person who knew about history. So I was like, let me make a show that teaches me about history. But I'm not trying to teach the audience about it. I'm trying to unearth something that has been buried or dismissed or that they've forgotten about or that someone else has buried for them. They buried themselves. So that's all. You know, so I go hunting for who's that dandy in the Yankee Doodle Dandy song? You know, we talk about this. We went to Patriots Day in Lexington, Mass and to kind of hang out at the reenactment. In drag. In drag, yeah. And we walked around with the only queens there and people kept giving us these microaggressions like, oh, you must be the French, you know. Or they would say like, oh, you're at the wrong parade. You know, because like the queers aren't supposed to be at the American Patriots Day parade. We're not patriots. So it was, I mean, and there were some of them were sweet and some of them were homophobic. But it was us just kind of saying, well, there was a dandy during the Yankee Doodle Dandy. So they were there. So it's not making fake news. It's saying, we're gonna show up and do our own reenactment. Like that's all. You wanna talk about that? Well, you know, part of, you know, what one of the things I got out of the 24-hour show is, it's like, okay, well, we're going back in history and we're, you know, we have these stories, but you know, also inserting queer culture into the history books because it's not really there. Where are we in the queer history books? We're not there. Have you read about it? Are they teaching gay sex and sex education class yet? Yo, what time is it? I don't know. So that's, you know, that's one big thing. You know, it's like, here we are, you know, Yankee Doodle Dandy, you know, and then all of the decades, you know, queer thinking, alternative thinking, think about it. You know, that's, I don't know. My little boom, boom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How about failure? Failure's a really big thing that you think about when you're making your shows and about the risk taking that facing failure brings and part of the excitement of the audience is what risks you'll take in front of us and that we get to see you succeed amazingly and also fail sometimes. Can you just talk about that risk taking? Well, I think it's my responsibility as an artist to risk on a stage, right? So again, Travis and I were talking about it. If you only have one show, failure is really scary because there's high stakes. But if you make a commitment to a life of performing and really get out there and do it every day or a life of making, then you have maybe eight shows a week. Then failure is less scary because, in fact, then failure becomes a present. And then it's like, oh, something different from the same thing that's happened every single night. So there's that side of the conversation of failure. And then the other thing is, I just think there's nothing more interesting than virtuosity and authentic failure on stage side by side. And I think of Nina Simone in that regard that she's, I mean, there's nobody as virtuosic, I think. I mean, there are other people who are more virtuosic in terms of their piano playing ability and their singing ability. But in terms of her artistry, I think she's it. And one of the reasons is because sometimes she sings off key and she's telling the story of inequality and inequality isn't always on pitch. And she's gonna risk being vulnerable and risk failing in the moment in order to get past that moment and get to something else. And that is something that you don't often see on stage. Usually you see polish on stage or people have worked really hard to get rid of the possibility of failure. So, I mean, we know this from the clubs. Failure is always present. There's always that risk of failure because the element of the audience throwing things at you is present. And I think that that is more of the root of most of our theater lineage. And yet we have done a really good job at eliminating any kind of danger from the room. So I like to bring some danger back into it. I like the audience too. My favorite moments, Julie Atlas-Muzan, she's a burlesque performer in New York, she's incredible. We were performing at a drag night at this old horrible bar called Splash. You remember Splash? Yeah, and I think it was Sweetie. Sweetie was the emcee and it was a contest night. This is when I had no money and so you could win a $100 cash prize and that was gonna buy me food for the month. And so I was desperate to win that cash prize. So I showed up and I was, I'm gonna sing the song that I know I can sing, I can kill the audience with it. So I did, I hit all the high notes. I was, you know, and the audience was like this. And Julie Atlas-Muzan gets up there and she's incredible. She's the, I mean, in terms of all the burlesque performers, she's the one that has the craft that's like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. She was better than me. And she was competing as well for that $100 prize. And she, she did this whole thing. It was extraordinary. And the audience went, but nothing like crazy. I was like, what is wrong with these people? And then this queen got up on stage and she lip synced badly to that song, my pussy and my crack, you know. And she took her teeth out at a certain moment and the audience went insane. They screamed and stopped the show. Everyone, she won the $100 prize. And but Julie and I, she took her teeth out. Julie and I were screaming with the audience. We're like, yeah! And it just, it really just taught me sometimes authentic failure is better than practice. That's all. She showed you. Yeah, let's take some questions from people here. Does somebody want to, you're supposed to step up to that microphone, I think, if you have a question. There's always this awkward moment. Silence. Should I ask Taylor something else and then somebody will think of a question by the time? Yeah? Yeah. Okay, so you've been making these huge shows. But as you mentioned, like we go back to, we did Young Ladies of and the Beast of Taylor Mac, these solo pieces that you performed all over. Do you ever hunger to do a solo show like that again? Do you think you will do that again? Or do you think no? No, no. I mean, I don't, I loved it. I mean, I feel like it taught me so much of my craft doing those shows and I never thought of them as solo shows because Basil Twist made the puppets and there was a lighting designer and David Drake worked with me as a director on the Beast of Taylor Mac. And so I didn't think, and the audience is there and they were always doing things as well. Young Ladies of, they have to sing the song at the end of the show. That's how we get to the dramatic event of the show and how we get to journeys in. So they, I never felt like it was really a solo show, but I just, well, life is short. And as a writer, you spend a lot of time alone and I don't wanna spend that much time alone anymore. So I prefer to hang out with people. Somebody have a question? No, there is zero curiosity in the room. Okay, well I have more. Don't worry, I have more. Do you have a question? I could give you some advice. Oh good, someone's asking a question. Yay, the brave one. Hi guys. Hi. If you could tell your 22 year old self something now that you wish you knew then, what would it be? I was mentioning this to someone earlier today. Well, it does have to do with this, but sure. Take good care of your teeth and do yoga. And you know, in terms of theater, I would rather, the way I work, I'd rather have good ideas on stage. And this reminds me of like Nina Simone, what you were saying. I'd rather have good ideas on stage than like, you know, like amazing finished products. You know, Taylor's costumes are a combination of ideas. It's like, oh, you know what I mean? That's just food for thought. Yeah, it can be a beautifully made dress, but you know, that's it. That's all it is. It's just a beautifully made dress. It could be so much more. Further, the word further, more. I think in terms of everywhere in your life, not just theater, but anything. Yeah, I think people stop before they're finished often. So I like that word further. How far can you take it? And then you discover that there's this other thing on the other side of that. I mean, that's why durational work is so interesting to me because it really takes the audience and the performers through it and then you're able to kind of get somewhere else that you didn't think you could get to or didn't even know was there. You know, in the 24 hour performance, the audience had been there for 24 hours and they, you know, somewhere around hour 19, the emotional vulnerability in the room was so intense. I mean, they were deranged with emotional availability. And I'd never seen an audience like that before where they just like everything I said, they just. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. But it was really incredible. We're crying. We're crying. And you know, so that wouldn't have happened if we'd stopped at our, it kind of would happen when we would do six hour shows, but it, you know, it's, you gotta go further than you think you can go, I think. And then the other thing I would say is just don't ask for permission to be creative. That's the main thing. If you can waste a lot of time when you're in your 20s asking for permission to be creative and I advocate that you just do it. And what I mean is don't audition. You know, whatever that means to you, you know, you could be, you could go to an audition, but don't audition for them. You know what I'm saying? Make it your art. If that's the road you want to go down where you are auditioning for parts and stuff like that, then do it. But don't make the audition an audition. Go in there to be a performer, you know. And, but yeah, don't just fucking do it. It's not that hard. It really isn't. You just got to do it. It's that you just have to make the decision. Do you have advice for your 22 year old son? So we started our company right out of NYU. There were four of us who started Tiny Mythic Theater Company, which was the original theater company, or we were directors and we didn't want to assistant direct for years and just get to direct readings. And we thought that there was something that a 21 or a 22 year old could bring to the material that we were choosing to work with that was different than what we would do when we were 40 with the same material. So we felt like there was a validity to us tackling Odon Van Horvath's Casimir and Caroline. I did the first US production of that incredibly, even though that's from the 30s. It hadn't been done here, you know, or an Icarus or a Medea material. Like we thought there's something that we can bring to that right now that's valuable and that is worthy of being seen. And we put it together and we self produced for each other inside our company. It was directors producing each other and then you get to direct the others are producing for you. So find your tribe, find the people that make the work that you are excited by and make work with them and make the work on your terms. And you may not get paid for it for a while, but make the work you wanna make. Don't have the money be an obstacle to the work that you wanna make. There's a way to make it happen. And I'm not saying everyone should start their own theater companies. Please don't think that's what I'm saying. But if that's what you wanna do, then do. But that's a choice that you're making them around your own artistic work. And sometimes that means you'll do more of your artistic work and sometimes that means you're gonna support other people and your work will be back burner and you have to think about if that's what you want. But make the work you wanna make. There's no reason not to. There's no obstacle. And I would also add to that that the Puritan dominance over expression is deep. Think about how your work that you make is controlled by the Puritan dominance over expression. And that artistic expression is an act of citizenship. So think about how when you express yourself and especially if you do it responsibly, that is an act of citizenship. So it's not something you ever have to apologize for. Further is basically. Fancy way of saying go further. Another question. Come on down. Hi. I was actually at the 24 hour performance. You were, you're failin' me. And it was like, I say it was the best day of my life literally. I was wondering if there were songs or topics that you either cut in the development of the thing or there were topics that you wish you could get to that missed out in the 24 hour? That's probably, I memorized probably 50 to 60 songs that we didn't actually use. That's 200, I mean, I stopped counting at a certain point, but at one point there was 246 songs in the show. I think that's roughly what we had at the end. So I, yeah, but there was at least, I mean over six years, and we're still adding where I'm memorizing a new one that we're gonna throw in when we're in Los Angeles and stuff, so we're still adding and changing things and taking things away. No single performance was ever the same. It's super exciting. Thank you. Yeah. I'm directing the Lily's Revenge at UMass this spring and we're very excited. We were just talking about how it'd be fun if somebody did that other than us. We're a little scared, but mostly very excited to attempt this work. And one of the things that has produced a bit of anxiety is how to maintain an audience that has not developed over time as you developed your audiences for a durational performance. And I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more about how, what drew you to durational performance and how you, it feels like an act of resistance against the technological and hyperspeed time we're in. And I've, that draws me to it. And I'm just wondering how you developed that as a format. Well, for Lily, I thought about weddings. I wanted, because it was talking a little bit, that the themes have a little bit to do with weddings and the oppression of the heteronormative narrative on everybody. And so I, so I thought, well, a wedding is five hours long. So the play should be five hours long. So, and then I thought, well, what are the elements of the wedding? And they had certain, certain tropes that people use in throughout the whole day. And it's not like you don't, you leave a wedding, you usually leave a wedding tired, but you're, I mean, usually people have a good time. And there's some dancing involved and there's some food involved. And there's times when the people that are performing take charge. And there are times when the audience gets to take charge. And so I just thought about a lot of that type of thing. And you also thought about no play structure. That was also part of the way that you thought about it. So that was layered on. Yeah, the Japanese no plays were five hours long. And they would do five of them in one day. So, they'd do five plays all in one day and they'd be five hours long. So that was a part of it. So this isn't something that is new. People have done 24 hour performances before. It's as machine was saying about the costumes are, it's a reset button in a way. Every time there's a, you wanna think about how you layer in surprise for the audience because that is the thing that makes them go like this. So, the red bastard said to me one time and I thought that's a wonderful buffoon performer. And Eric Davis said his name, red bastard. Eric Davis, he said every 10 seconds something surprising has to happen. And I thought, oh yeah, that's right. How can you put that in a five hour play or a 24 hour show? Every 10 seconds something surprising happens. So instead of the, some people like Robert Wilson and some will do the durational work and there's an element of trance to it, which is gorgeous. But these Lily and 24 Decay, you're supposed to be engaged in every moment. So it's not, you're not checking out. I mean you can if you want to, but that's not the goal. So the goal, what we had to do was stitch in surprise at every moment. Now that could be a visual surprise of a costume or a transformation of a costume. It could be lighting. It could be a combination of two words that you don't normally hear together. It could be a pause where you didn't think there'd be a pause. It could be that suddenly there's 36 people on stage when you thought it was just a solo play. That you know like, so you stitch all that in. And with Lily and 24, we thought about people's butts. And how long are they sitting? When do we want to get them up? When do we want to get them moving? I knew that people were gonna, I was like, I researched how do you help yourself get through a 24 hour, you know, on those sleep. And it was like shine bright lights in people's faces at a certain time. So we changed the lighting so that the lighting would suddenly, work lights came on and everyone was like ah, ah, ah. And they think in the moment they're being assaulted but actually we're helping them, you know. So it was a lot of stuff like that. And so just think about that. And the play is gonna take care of it for you. You don't have to do anything too much more than the play. And with Lily too, one of the things was that we changed the seating configuration every time they came back in between acts. So they were in a completely new environment. And even when they went on the intermissions, there were the keogans that were happening all around the space and that people were experiencing. Kristen directed those right here. Did you, are you working as the director of all of the acts? Are you collaborating with other people? Uh huh, you are. It's been done that way before. Yeah, and it works, it works in multiple. We had five, six directors for the original. And then when we went to San Francisco and did it, we had six different directors for it. And then when we went to Boston at ART, it was one director for the whole thing. And then in Southern Repertory, they did also six directors for the entire thing. So it's a big job, but you can do it. I've seen it happen. Just want to say first off, I really admire the chances you take and the big leaps and bounds in all your work. I'm a senior in high school. I'm currently working on my first full-length play as a part of Independent Study. And I guess I'm already achieving step one of the question about AS because I've insisted since day one that it is site-specific and I am writing it with that in mind. But I'm seeing parallels of things I'm learning here today, how they're going to help me with my own site-specific exploration because durational, site-specific, all unconventional theater, but still valid and beautiful. How have you been able to break the tradition in your mind that theater must be proscenium or theater must be in a traditional space? How have you been able to re-teach the idea to yourself that theater could be anywhere? Because I know I'm having some trouble writing it, going back to norm and going back to things I see in theater every weekend. But I want to re-teach myself the idea of what this could be. I've made a lot of work and produced a lot of work that's been completely different. Promenade style, completely seating on four sides, audience configuration changing throughout the piece. I mean, site-specific, outside, inside. We just did a show in our prototype festival in January by Alicia Hall Moran on Ice Gates in the middle of Bryant Park with a taiko player playing the drums on the ice and a sex player came out on Ice Gates too, and a couple of ice dancers. I mean, and the audience was people who were there to Ice Gate. That's who was seeing it, you know? So they weren't people who thought they were gonna see an opera that day, you know? So I think that it's about thinking about who you're making the work for and how do you wanna engage in a conversation with someone about work? How do you wanna engage in a dialogue with them? And what is the context in which that work can be most illuminated and most inviting? Taylor always talks about the invitation that you're making to the audience and thinking about how can I invite them in a way where their participation feels like it doesn't exist without them and they feel included and engaged and activated. And the proscenium is sometimes the environment for that, but many times it is not the environment that's gonna help that invitation happen the way you want it to for your work. I love a proscenium though, I will say this, because then you can fuck it up, right? If you start in a theater that's open and then you can't break the rules, right? If you start with rules, you can break. So I mean, we just did, I think, eight of our best shows, four in San Francisco and four in Melbourne. The San Francisco Theater is this old Broadway touring house, 1600 seats, three tiers. The seats were all nailed down and we did our 24 hour show there that we had done at St. Anne's Warehouse where it was more flexible and we could rearrange things and get rid of chairs and all this. So I thought it was even better with the seats nailed down. I mean, certain things were better at St. Anne's, certain things were better there, but I just think about how your work can be done everywhere and what it does to the work and how you have to change the work in order for it to be, I couldn't just do the exact same show. We couldn't, we had to change things to make it work on the three levels, but they were getting naked in the balcony. We had this nudie baby. In our show, we had nudie baby run around the stage and kind of in the audience, this wonderful performer named Tigger. And then in San Francisco, because it was three tiers, I said, well, let's have three nudie babies, one for each level. And so then the nudie babies ran around the three levels, but in the balcony, people started taking their clothes off in the audience members and then there was like, like not just a couple people, like 20 people running around naked in the balcony. You know what I mean? So you don't know if that was done in a regular, you know, a performance space where it was appropriate, it wouldn't have been half as much fun as that it was done in the space where Judy Garland performed. That's not where you expect to see that. So sometimes it's the juxtaposition of the material in the space, not how the space works with the material, but sometimes it's the way the work works with them, you know, the space works with the material. It's both. I really loved what you were saying before when you were talking about Nina Simone and how you think she's the most virtuosic artist there is. And I would love to hear you talk more about how you define virtuosic artistry, because I was thinking about, I think of, you know, long duration works have that element, and, but there's so much more involved that you definitely bring to the table. So I'd love to hear how about, you think about that for yourself and your own art and also in the art that you appreciate and enjoy the most. I just think virtuosity is discipline and commitment to daily practice. That's all. It's just sharing that element of yourself. So if you practice singing every single day and you know how to do it and you go up and you sing and stuff, that's virtuosic. That's all. I mean, I think, I think, but it's differently defined like machines, costumes or virtuosic because I've never seen anyone work so hard. But somebody might look at them and say, but that's cardboard. That's not virtuosic. So to me it is because it looks better than fabric. Do you wanna talk about that? Well, yeah, I mean, you know, it's like virtuosity. It's no intent. No, I keep, that's one of the words that I think of. Your intention, you know, setting intentions, you know, for the day, for the week, for the month, for a project and, you know, focusing. And, you know, really like doing it. Simple, simply, I don't know, I think it's been said. You know, I mean, just setting those intentions. It's like sending a prayer, you know, asking the universe for something or telling, you know, that kind of power. Any last questions? I was wondering if any of you guys could speak on fear and how you use it and how it comes into your lives as, like, from the artist's point of view, but also, like, while you're performing and as you're creating, how do you, what's your relationship with it? I heard an actor describe acting as, you know, the only other job that causes you that much stress is, you know, bomb deactivation. And, I mean, yeah, it's terrifying. I don't know, I'm probably gonna die from stomach cancer or something like that. I mean, I'm just always afraid before I go on stage, unless I've been in a show for a really long time. You know, if I've done it eight times a week for three months, then I stop being afraid. And that, there's something really appealing about that particular thing. But when you're in a new venue, new time, new type of audience, when you're on the road and, you know, you don't know how somebody in South Carolina is gonna respond to your show, or we're going down to Texas and they have a conceal and carry law on the campus that we're gonna be performing. And I'm like, is someone gonna shoot me? You know, is someone gonna shoot one of my, the musicians that work with us? Like, am I responsible for everybody's safety? So those types of things do kind of spring up a lot when you're on the road or when the critics are coming. Cause like when you've worked really hard on something and then you got like, that's what I mean by one day, if it's just one performance, then it's scary. Then there's things at stake. So when a critic comes, it's just one performance for them, which is, I just hate that about criticism. They should have to come and see like 10 performances before they can write something about it. You know, people will come and see a 24 decade of three hours and then they would write something like they know what it's about. You know, or they would see one performance of a workshop and then write something about it and say that they know what it is. You know, and you're like, yeah, we had six musicians on stage come back when we got the orchestra, thank you very much. And then talk about that moment. You know, so it's, so those moments where it's just, it's, I don't know. I really don't know how to, all I can say is how I deal with fear is my Alexander, my meditation, my warm up, I try to be as prepared as I possibly can knowing that anything can happen. I try to incorporate the calamity into the performance when the calamity happens. And I try to understand that that is the joy, that oftentimes it's the thing that goes wrong, that is the best present, that the people in the audience remember the most and go home talking about how we transformed calamity. So those are, that's how I deal with the fear. I never am afraid once I start rehearsing, so if I'm backstage and I'm nervous, I go, well, I'll just sing over that song and then I just forget that I'm afraid. So it's also about just getting active. If you sit around and wait, that's the word. My least favorite moment is that the 10 minutes before the show. I'll say as a director, it's hard because you don't get to get active there. You get to continue to sit there and be terrified through the whole show. When you're on the critics nights, yes, totally. Yeah, so you don't get to actually get into the performance. But I think that the fear is mitigated by the joy of the creating of the work. So the quality of the collaboration that you have with the people as you're making the work. It's the journey that gets you to the piece that you make. But that journey is, as a director, that's my part of the craft. And then once you're performing it, that's the actor's part of the craft where they take the piece and make the life happen that you guys have made on their journey together. But, yeah. Nervous? I actually do get very nervous. Oh, no, I have to leave. You've, oh, you saw me at, like, first. Oh, well, there's, well, first of all, I get scared, like, coming up to the show, when I present a new costume or something visual, I really, really, I put a lot of intention. I really, really think about it a long time before I actually start making it. And it's, you know, I get, oh my god, people are gonna be looking at it. And then most of the time, what I find myself doing is I overcompensate. It's like, well, it has to be more. Or it has to be bigger. More, more ideas, more. And I'm always, like, I'm a bit of a hoarder. Like, I just, no, I need more, more, more, I'm always, like, going over the budget, no more. I have to be, it's like, it's kind of like an insecurity. I'm like, it has to work. Oh, please, please, you know. And usually, if Taylor's up on stage and everyone's looking at it, I might be the only one who's not having a good time. Like, oh god, I should have changed this. I should have changed that. You know, I get, I get nervous about it. I do, I mean, I shouldn't. But, and when I changed Taylor during the 24 hour show, I still, I do get shaky. I'm nervous, we do it so fast. I'm always afraid, oh, it's gonna, you know. Sometimes, we're not gonna do it in time. There was one, that one little moment that happened. In Melbourne, where they took the screen away before, it's like, why no? You know, sometimes, you know, you know, choreographed movement doesn't always go the way you want it to. And it kind of changes from space to space too. And of course, you know, I have a singing point, a singing point part. In the first hour, I get so scared for that. I don't sing in the rest of the show. I have one singing, one chance. And I think that the audience gets to see my real, they really see me at a vulnerable moment. Because I don't, I'm not really a singer. I just come out, Taylor is sweet enough to invite me out and we sing this sweet little song. I get so nervous, but you can tell that I'm nervous, but because you can see my emotions, the audience gets emotional too. And it becomes very authentic. So fear is something you can use because it'll make people nervous and it'll get their emotions going too. So, you know. I think we say thank you for joining us this afternoon and come see Gary at here in the fall of 2019.