photos by Niall Walker

 

TAYLOR MAC
February 25 – March 4 2011
@ The Studio, Sydney Opera House

 

 

 

 

 

 

TAYLOR MAC

Taylor Mac returns to Sydney - this time for Mardi Gras.

"I'm a big fan of taking wigs off," reveals New Yorker, Taylor Mac.

Yet wigs aren’t the only accoutrements regularly ditched by the flamboyant drag artist. During his last, delightfully ramshackle 2007 Sydney performance, Mac began by looking like a female graduate of the more is more school of accessorizing. Shedding layers of make-up, sequence, hair and fabric like a crazed, speed-moulting reptile, 90 minutes later Mac stood before us exhausted, broken and almost naked, singing with all the poignancy of a lost schoolboy.

"I start off looking as weirdly fabulous as I can, and then that kinda gets forgotten about," chuckles Mac. "I'm a big fan of deconstruction. I like it when a mess is made on stage.”

Mac’s performances draw on the glory days of drag, before lip-synching, misogyny and audience-goading replaced talent. With his trusty ukulele and impeccable timing, Mac tackles politics as well as high heels, artfully straddling the cleavage between musical comedy and thought provoking theatre.

“I don't want my shows to just be one thing,” explains Mac. “I want them to... surprise everybody. I try to have some of it be intellectual, some of it sensational..."

When not performing solo song and monologue shows, Mac is an Obie Award winning playwright and self-confessed “community activist”. Yet whether writing for himself or others, Mac’s always looking to engage. Audiences are encouraged to think, talk, cry and laugh about everything from patriarchy and war, to homogeneity and gentrification.

"My goal…" explains Mac, "is to remind people of their humanity, and the whole range of [that] humanity.”

His latest show in Sydney is called The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook. Partly inspired by lazy critics repeatedly equating Mac with Tiny Tim - simply for playing ukulele - the show’s real proposition is in its subtitle: Comparison Is Violence.

“There's a whole conversation that happens throughout the piece about comparison,” explains Mac. "It’s a show that challenges the audience.”

Mac’s challenge is to question the insidious analogising that pervades many aspects of our lives, whether we’re comparing lovers, friends, artistic works or decades.

“It's really about how we treat each other,” says Mac. “Do we examine each other, meet each other, in the present moment, or are we always contextualising each other? So it's actually a much deeper show than it might look. But I put that kind of showy veneer on, throughout the whole thing so people can just walk away being fully entertained. Or they can walk away hopefully thinking about it.”

By Paris Pompor