Taylor Mac, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated performance artist and playwright, once spent 24 hours on a Brooklyn stage reexamining the American songbook while wearing ornate drag. Mac’s devoted one hour to each 10-year span since 1776, tracing U.S.
history — particularly that of marginalized groups — through a glittering series of vignettes including “Yankee Doodle,” minstrel numbers, the aria “Soliloquy,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” lesbian anthems from the ’90s and much, much more. Mac spent six years performing the show in small chunks around the world before mounting it as a one-time endurance test that ranked among 2016’s most acclaimed cultural events. A mere 650 people got to witness Mac’s feat live, but thanks to Oscar-winning directors and ( , about the large-scale project that memorialized AIDS victims), it’s been condensed and preserved via HBO.
is both a stylish highlight reel and a moving testimonial from the lucky audience that became participants in Mac’s experiment. Epstein and Friedman blend performance footage and interviews with Mac’s collaborators to chronicle the ingenuity that would otherwise be lost to time. Their doc is eligible for an outstanding variety special (prerecorded) Emmy, and Mac tells how it came together.
I’m a theater artist, so I make an ephemeral thing every time. It’s so much about the moment. We did have to ask ourselves questions: Why would it be important to film it? And how can the film be it.