Taylor Mac

Taylor Mac (who uses “judy” – lowercase sic – as a gender pronoun) is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, director and producer. Plays include: Gary, A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (Broadway), A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (shown in its 24-hour entirety at St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Curran Theater, the Ace Theater, the Melbourne Festival, upcoming at the Berliner Festspiele), Hir (Magic Theater, Playwrights Horizon, Steppenwolf and over sixty professional productions), The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (La Mama with the Talking Band), The Lily’s Revenge (HERE, Magic Theater, American Repertory Theater), The Young Ladies Of (HERE, Playmakers Repertory, Manchester’s Library Theater), Red Tide Blooming (PS 122), and The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac (highlights include: The Public Theater, The Sydney Opera House, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival).

Mac, aside from acting in much of judy’s own work, sometimes plays with others. Most notably: Shen Teh/Shui Ta in The Foundry Theater’s production of Good Person of Szechwan, in the City Center’s Encores production of Gone Missing, Puck/Egeus in the Classic Stage Company’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and in the two-man vaudeville, The Last Two People On Earth, which judy co-created with Mandy Patinkin and director Susan Stroman.

Mac is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama and the recipient of multiple awards including the Kennedy Prize, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert in Theater, The Booth Award, the Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, two Bessies, two Obies, two Helpmann’s, and an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is currently the resident playwright at HERE.

The Apology: This world premiere adaptation of The Apology of Socrates and Satie’s Socrate is part of the playwright’s continued quest in navigating the evil forces of the world with beauty and contemplation. The piece is in two acts: the first is a modern-day look at early 20th century French composer Erik Satie’s Socrate, a “symphonic drama” for voice and sparse orchestration noted for music that is either seen as bland and featureless, or of superhuman tranquility and delicate beauty. The second act is an adaptation of Plato’s The Apology of Socrates, the Socratic dialogue that presents Socrates’s legal defense against the charges of impiety and “corrupting the young.”