| A 24-Decade History of Popular Music | |
|---|---|
| A Radical Faerie Realness Ritual | |
| Music | Various |
| Lyrics | Various |
| Book | Taylor Mac |
| Premiere | October 8–9, 2016:St. Ann's Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY |
| Awards |
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A 24-Decade History of Popular Music is amusical andperformance art work by American actor, playwright, and cabaret performerTaylor Mac.
A 24-Decade History of Popular Music has received acclaim and numerous awards, including the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, as well as becoming a finalist for thePulitzer Prize for Drama. The production has been performed at festivals and performance venues in the U.S. and internationally, often in abbreviated versions or separate acts, and occasionally in full. In 2023, a concert film directed by Academy Award winnersRob Epstein andJeffrey Friedman premiered and was released throughHBO andMax.
Premiered in full in 2016, the musical uses mainly pre-existingsongs popular throughout the history of the United States to examine and reframe American history through the experiences of marginalized communities. Mac says that "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music is a reenactment of how the individual(s) may lose the long game but communities and movements, if continually brought together, have the potential to thrive while bending towards justice."[1] Presented in eight acts and featuring 246 songs, the production is intended to last twenty-four hours when performed to completion.[2][3][4]
The complete production is performed over eight acts, with each act representing three decades of U.S. history.[3]
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15 years old, 14 years old, I went to the first or second AIDS walk that was in San Francisco, and I had never met an out homosexual before. It was a pretty profound experience for a little kid that grew up in suburbia and a pretty normative, slightly oppressive environment. Even ... It was discovering queer history, queer agency, queer community because it was deteriorating from this epidemic. So I wanted to make a show about it. So this is what the show is: its a metaphorical representation of that experience from a 15-year-old kid's perspective.[5]
A 24-Decade History's development began in 2011, with the goal of holding one marathon performance in 2016.
Taylor Mac, music director Matt Ray, costume designerMachine Dazzle, and co-director Niegel Smith developed the show over five years, holding workshops and performing abridged versions at festivals and small venues.[6][7] The show was workshopped as part of theSundance Institute's 2015 Theatre Lab.[8]
The show's length, strenuous performance, and strong audience participation are intended to make the audience build bonds at having gone through "a dire circumstance with us over a 24-hour period."[5] Mac says, "I believe theater is community and I think of myself as a community activist; someone whose job it is to bring people together, give them a shared experience and remind them of the things they've forgotten, dismissed or buried."[9]
Many productions of the show are abridged versions, with the songs and subject matter confined to specific decades or themes.[7][10] At different touring sites, local performers and artists participate,[11][12] and the show is modified to incorporate local history and songs from the region.[1]
A 24-Decade History of Popular Music has been performed as a 24-hour marathon performance only once, from October 8–9, 2016, atSt. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.[11] Before the marathon performance, St. Ann's Warehouse also hosted the first complete presentation of the show, albeit in parts from September 15 through October 3, 2016.[3]
Since the premiere performance, the 24-hour production has been staged several times, though broken up into four chapters of six hours each, spread over several days. The first of these stagings took place at theCurran Theatre in San Francisco, between September 15 and 24, 2017.[13]
TheMelbourne International Arts Festival hosted the production, playing the four chapters between October 11 and 20, 2017.[12] Also during the festival,Taylor Mac performedThe Inauguration on October 5, an abbreviated version of the show that lasted from 90 minutes to two hours, as well asThe Wrap on October 22, also featuring songs from the show.[14][15][16]
From March 15 to 24, 2018, the four-chapter production played at the Theater at theAce Hotel in Los Angeles, presented by theUCLA Center for the Performing Arts (CAP UCLA).[9]
A 24-Decade History was hosted by the 2018 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, playing at theKimmel Center for the Performing Arts. For this production, the performance was divided into two twelve-hour parts, with the first part beginning on June 2, and the second part beginning on June 9, 2018.[1][17]
The first act only debuted in London at theBarbican Centre as part of theLondon International Festival of Theatre, being performed on June 28, 29, and 30, 2019.[18][19] In September 2019, abridged versions were performed at four tour stops in the United States, as well as five performances of Mac'sHoliday Sauce show in December.[10]
From October 10 to 20, 2019, the four-chapter show played as part of TheBerliner Festspiele's Immersion program series.[10][20]
On June 14, 2023, theconcert film of the same name premiered atTribeca Festival.[27] Directed by Academy Award winnersRob Epstein andJeffrey Friedman, the film covers the 2016St. Ann's Warehouse premiere performance. On June 27, the film aired onHBO and began streaming onMax.[28]
It won the juriedOutstanding Costumes for Variety, Nonfiction, or Reality Programming at the76th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards[29]