If history is written by the winners, the songs are sung by the people.
This week, performance artist Taylor Mac embarks on a tremendous feat of physical, mental and artistic endurance in a marathon-length show of gargantuan scope. “A 24-Decade History Of Popular Music" is a fierce glam-drag jaunt through all of American history, deconstructed over four, six-hour-long performances. In heels.
Photograph: Little Fang Photo
Taylor Mac, who prefers the pronoun judy (lowercase j), sings (and has memorized!) 246 songs that were popular in their day. Mac reframes 240 years of American events, policies and movements from the point of view of the outsider, the unrepresented and the oppressed.
Mac characterizes judy’s show as a “radical faerie realness ritual,” and for all its raunchy outrageousness, kindness and community are still at its core. Friday night’s opening chapter began with Mac inviting a tribal leader from Indian Canyon up on stage to offer a public apology. “My ancestors were really cruel to your ancestors,” judy said. Mac then goes back to the beginning to poke around (and dance with) the skeletons in America’s closet.
Photograph: Little Fang Photo
For each song, Mac ingeniously imagines the backstory, creating characters that put the songs in context. In “Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?" Mac first sings it for laughs, mocking this lady’s bourgeois crisis. But then Mac spins a story of a wife confined by inequality, waiting, powerless, for her husband. Without humor, a 24-hour slosh through this country’s contemptible behavior towards indigenous peoples, slaves, immigrants and gays could leave us running to the doors. But Mac is immensely entertaining and the show is full of hilarious, bawdy commentary as well as silly, rowdy fun.
The San Francisco performance at the Curran Theater marks the first complete presentation since Mac’s historic 24-hour marathon performance at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse last fall. Still, six hours is a daunting commitment. But like an astute kindergarten teacher, Mac knows how to keep the audience happy and peppy. There’s loads of zany audience participation—within the first ten minutes we are called upon to stand up and speak in tongues. Mac’s flamboyant assistants, the “Dandy Minions” passed out drag attire and most everyone took a glittery hat, a feather boa or a tutu that could be worn as a crown. Some audience members even join the Dandy Minions in various stages of undress. During the battle between drinking songs and the Temperance choir, beer cans are distributed in the aisles and we are encouraged to throw ping pong balls at the teetotalers.
Photograph: Little Fang Photo
In the fifth hour, blindfolds were passed out and we were instructed to wear them for the next hour. No peeking. The audience is given flowers with which to tickle their neighbors and grapes to feed one another. Wildest of all, the audience is then instructed to play musical chairs with our blindfolds on. With audience members finding themselves in a lap instead of a seat, there is a surefire spirit of “We Are All in This Togetherness.”
Throughout the first night, Mac reminded the audience, “every single thing you are feeling is appropriate.” With Mac as shaman guru guiding us through the unvarnished history of America, and with our commitment to stay for the long haul, the show is, among many more things, a radical reminder that we are all in this America together.