Acclaimed out playwright and drag-performance artist Taylor Mac is back in Chicago. But instead of donning glittery deconstructed drag onstage to entertain and prod audiences to question gender and culture throughout history, Mac is behind the scenes at rehearsals for Steppenwolf Theatre's Chicago premiere of Hir.
"It's fun to queer the institution a bit," said Mac, happy to have Hir performed by a Chicago theater famed around the world for the machismo and no-holds-barred performance energy of its founders. "Everyone can use a little queering every so often."
Mac's critically acclaimed 2015 off-Broadway drama concerns a dysfunctional American family. Hir follows PTSD-addled ex-Marine Isaac ( Ty Olwin ), who returns from Afghanistan only to find a different war zone at home. There's Isaac's abusive father Arnold ( Jeff Award-winner Francis Guinan ), a recently liberated mother ( Tony Award-nominee Amy Morton as Paige ) and a newly out transgender sibling ( trans performer Em Grosland as Max ).
Since there is a trans character and the title of Hir is a pronoun variation ( Mac's own preferred pronoun is a lowercase "judy" ), Mac told Windy City Times that audiences can mistakenly think the play is a gender polemic or an agitprop piece.
"We always have to represent ourselves in culture, so I kind of flipped that a little bit to ask what happens if a theatergoing audience has to consider America if it was a trans character going through transition," Mac said. "It's not about gender, it's about polarization and what we're dealing with in the United States right now in terms of these two very different philosophies: one is to go forward and one is to go back."
Mac says the recent U.S. presidential election has actually put Hir more in the light that judy originally had in mind when writing it.
"Some people have said the play is very prescient, but I say 'No, I was paying attention for the past 20 years.'" Mac said. "It's not because the polarization suddenly happened because Donald Trump was elected. It's been going on quite some time in the country."
Even with limited time in the rehearsal room, Mac has been impressed at how everyone has been so down-to-earth under Hir director Hallie Gordon. Mac likes the collaborative atmosphere so far, especially since judy admits that Hir is a very difficult work to get right in performance and sometimes for theater audiences to take in.
"It's challenging a lot of expectations," Mac said. "It's a show that is trying to get liberals to pay attention and be a little conscious with their choices."
In the years since Mac's Chicago debut when About Face Theatre presented judy's autobiographical father-son piece The Young Ladies Of in 2008, the New York-based artist has gone on to more acclaim, marathon performances and creations with Tony Award-winning collaborators.
For example, Mac starred opposite lesbian playwright Lisa Kron ( Fun Home ) in a 2013 off-Broadway adaptation of Brecht's Good Person of Szechwan. Mac also notably teamed up with award-winning actor Mandy Patinkin ( Homeland ) and director/choreographer Susan Stroman ( The Producers ) for a 2015 regional production of The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mac also finally completed the long-gestating 24-hour marathon performance piece A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Mac was named a Pulitzer finalist in drama for it last year.
No Windy City performances of the full 24-Decade History of Popular Music are currently in the works ( selected excerpts were previously staged at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art ). Yet Mac will be touring the piece to San Francisco, Philadelphia and a soon-to-be-announced Australian venue in the future. To make this massive work that politically deconstructs American music and mythology to be a little more digestible, Mac has broken it into four six-hour parts and sometimes two 12-hour parts.
"It's not a cheap show to do," Mac said. "And it's certainly a lot of work."
When asked about judy's place in the drag world, Mac was equivocal—especially in light of the growing mainstream success of RuPaul's Drag Race and how it is commercializing drag.
"The one thing that I don't like about it is everyone is talking about 'branding.' I'm like, I'm not a cow," said Mac with a laugh. "Art world drag and commercial drag are two separate things and they're both valid. I'm not pooh-poohing either one or saying one is better than the other, but I don't perform at a lot of LGBT Pride events. When you think of someone to book to entertain the masses, you don't think of me. It's not really my world."
Nonetheless, Mac is keen to continue working at creating a space for LGBTQ performers and ideas in American culture. And that's both a performer and playwright who can now make a certain degree of demands. For example, Mac has made it a casting requirement that theaters must hire a trans or gender-queer performer to star in Hir.
"I'm in this extraordinary place where you get to come up with ideas and make them," Mac said. "I like to create big-form kind of theater and I've managed to figure out a way to do that in the United States, which is very rare."
Hir runs from Thursday, June 29, through Sunday, Aug. 20, at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St. Previews run through Saturday, July 8, with an official opening on Sunday, July 9. Tickets are $20-$89; call 312-335-1650 or visit Steppenwolf.org .
