Taylor Mac

"Taylor Mac is a theatre artist who prefers to write a bio in the first person. Hello.  I’m also a theatre artist who longs to be rid of the usual bios, which are lists of achievements.  Here’s something different.

In case you don’t know, my pronoun is judy (only capitalized when at the start of a sentence, like a normal pronoun).  A few people have claimed I use it as a joke.  They are uninformed.  It’s not a joke, which doesn’t mean it isn't funny.  It’s a personalized pronoun for someone whose gender (professionally and personally) is constantly changing. My gender isn’t male or female or non-binary (which oddly creates a binary between people who are non-binary and people who are binary).  My gender is “performer” (one day I’ll get it on the passport) and continually changing.  It’s also an art piece and as annoying to navigate as it is delicious.  You too may change yourself.

Judy’s been a form queen.  I love a hand-painted map, one that's personalized, researched, detailed, figurative, metaphorical, and imperfect.  Essentially: stack the genres, layer the forms, delight in the human warbles, throw in a little direction, notice the image is faded, get lost, damp, realize it’s grown something that might be harming you, try to clean it, hope it worked, realize it hasn’t, choose to make use of the harm, find a different way, repeat with variation, and call it theatre.

And… I wonder if it’s time to consider that form, style, aesthetics, pace, duration, craft, and process may not be content?  Gosh forbid.  We haven’t yet achieved enough critical mass of agreement that they are content.  Don’t give up yet Taylor Mac.  There is more work to be done before derailing this wholistic approach with sabotaging doubt.  Commit gyrl.

Still… there is a nagging question: are we all behaving like Virgos, obsessing over the categories, stratagems, and lists in order to ground our nomadic insecurities with an organizing principle chained to want?

Here’s a biographical detail for this bio:  I’m a Virgo.  Though I don’t believe in astrology.  Most of the people I hold dear are astrology nuts.  It’s hard to hold firm to a belief when dearness gets in the way."

Photo courtesy the artist.