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[0:00] David Rigano: Welcome to the Drama Book Show, where we bring you conversations with the writers, artists and theater makers shaping the stories we see on stage. My name is David Rigano. In this episode, we are joined by acclaimed playwright-performer and MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac for a discussion about their newest collaboration with composer Matt Ray. Set in ancient Athens on the eve of Socrates' execution, the play blends philosophy, music, history and irreverent humor into a theatrical event that asks what really matters at the end of a life, and what theater can offer us in moments of uncertainty. Taylor is joined by Obie and Whiting Award-winning writer and director Shayok Misha Chowdhury, whose thoughtful conversation explores the origins of the play, the relationships between history and performance, and the joy of creating work that invites audiences into conversation rather than certainty. Here's Taylor Mac in conversation with Shayok Misha Chowdhury, live at the Drama Book Shop.

[1:27] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I am so excited to be here with Taylor, who is an artist that I have admired for many years, and to talk about The Hang, to hang about The Hang, which was one of my favorite shows that I've seen in a very long time. So when TCG reached out to see whether I wanted to chat with Taylor about this particular piece, I was like, I would never pass up that opportunity. Yeah, we're just going to spend an hour here with you this evening chatting a little bit amongst ourselves and then opening it up to questions from you all. But I just wanted to start by, I guess, first of all, I want to say that all of your shows, and oh, shall I wait? Okay, great. All of your shows, and The Hang in particular, do the kind of thing for me as an audience member that I'm always hunting for as a theater goer, but so rarely get, which is that it feels impossible to describe what I just witnessed in language.

And if you could describe it in language, then why did we do it as a play in the first place? And I feel as though I walked out of The Hang both embraced by and disoriented by, it was as though I'd seen something, it felt like I'd seen a dragon or something, like I'd seen something that I didn't know was quite possible to do. And I feel like everything that you do has something of that kind of an effect on me. And I guess I always just am, I wonder how something like that starts for you. If you can take us back to the beginning, was it, what was the seed that started you out on The Hang? Was it the source material? Was it a collaborator? Was it some other restlessness that you were?

[3:03] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I think this one started differently than other things usually start for me. It was source material. I'd read the Apologia or the Apology and thought, oh, I want to make a theater piece about this. And then when I started writing it, it turned into a kind of a musical. It also was about my dear collaborator, Matt Ray. It was the composer for the piece. And Matt worked primarily in the jazz world and the world that he, that world when he was coming up in it was pretty homophobic. And when I found Matt and I kind of brought him into this kind of downtown performance art theater world, he had never really experienced anything like this before, that kind of embrace of his queerness. And so then he brought all these musicians into our world and then everyone's suddenly having fun instead of feeling attacked by toxic masculinity.

And so I said, but we were always performing pop and rock music or folk music and a little bit of jazz in 24 Decade History, which was a show of 240 covers. And so when I said, do you want to come on board and write music for this? The idea was to let him play in his jazz world, but let him have some kind of control over to do it in this loving world instead of in a homophobic world. So it was a kind of, after doing 24 Decade, in some ways it was my, he'd worked so hard on that show as an arranger of all the songs and the musical director. And I knew that he had this artistry in him and I knew that the world wasn't aware of it. So it was a little bit of my love for him was what spurred the piece on, because I was originally thinking of it as just a solo show where I would talk.

I wasn't thinking there'd be songs, but then when it poured out of me in lyrics, I thought, let me ask Matt to write music. And so that's, I think that's, and one of the, why we call it The Hang is because when I would hang out with all the musicians that he brought into my life, we would, that was what everyone would say. Are you staying for The Hang? After the show. It was always about the, on tour, it's the most special group of people and we take over all the hotels and there's always a piano in the lobby and then everyone in the hotel comes and everyone's singing and we're just having, it's the best time. And life isn't normally that in New York. I think it's bohemianism. An artistic life has been taken over by careerism. And so, so it's only on tour that we get to experience that. So we kind of want to just bring it into a theater and the chaos of what an evening like that might be.

[6:11] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: That, I'm thinking about how so much of what the experience of the show is inviting us into that vibe that you're talking about. And I guess I'm wondering whether, first of all, I'm interested in what, what about the apologia and the circumstances surrounding the end of Socrates's life tickled your fancy? And then was it the fact of working with these artists that inspired you to do that thought experiment around The Hang, his final moments being that kind of a hang or which came first?

[6:45] Taylor Mac: I'm a form queen. So I love, I'm a very, learn this from Sondheim, content dictates the form. And that's not necessarily how you always have to work, but it's, it can be quite useful. And I like working that way. And I like to think about what am I talking about? And then what's the form that works for this piece. And so I, form, style, genre, whatever you might want to call it. And I read the apologia and I thought, oh, Socrates was the first Jesus. Like Jesus is a sequel. And every year we have passion plays that happen in the world. And everyone, we do these rituals of these passion plays about Jesus. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice if Radical Fairies had a passion play about Socrates?

Socrates was the first, basically the first martyr that died. I don't know the first one, but before Jesus who died asking for, because they were asking us to think on virtue. So I thought we deserve our own rituals and we haven't grown up with them. And so we have to invent them. So it was a little bit about creating a theatric that would just take the time to consider Socrates and consider wondering as prayer instead of opinion or belief or faith as prayer. The act of doubt, the act of curiosity, the act of wondering as a form of prayer. And so that's what I was interested in creating. So there's this, we don't tell the audience ever, but in the text, if you read it, you'll see that everyone's, it's a group of Radical Fairies performing the ritual of the death of Socrates.

And so why you're maybe a little, what is this? What am I seeing? I've never seen anything like this. It's because we don't explain it. So we're just like, you're just seeing a bunch of Radical Fairies perform death of Socrates, but we're not telling you it's meta or anything like that. It's just happening.

[8:40] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: That's what's so delicious about it because it doesn't, it's not a thing that, I hate the experience of walking out of a theater and being able to say, oh, that's what that was about. And then I've just had it for lunch. And then whereas I'm just like, and moving on. And I feel like I'm interested, you put it so beautifully in words, what part of the intention behind it was, but I also find it's your approach to the source material is so irreverent. It's not as though what you just described as the piece was a kind of like reverent prayer that I received.

[9:16] Taylor Mac: Well, that was the other thing is, yeah, that every, Socrates is queer. And when I read the Apologia, it's so clear that he's so queer and he's funny and he's got this great sense of humor. And yet everything I was raised to believe about Socrates and taught in the minimal way, minimal way that I was taught it is that he's serious and this is a serious subject and philosophy is serious and have reverence. But he didn't have reverence. So again, his content dictates the form. And there's a little bit of trying to reclaim him for queer people because he's been made heterosexual in the eyes of teachers, professors, history books.

[10:03] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: And how do you, what's wild to think about because the works that you make and The Hang in particular is I first experienced it live. And the thing that I'm experiencing is so dimensional and its color and architecture and costume and music. And so I'm both wondering about what the process of writing it is like, how is it? Do you start alone with the libretto? When do you begin? What's that sort of like back and forth process? And then also, what is it like for you to now have a sort of like text object of it out in the world?

[10:43] Taylor Mac: At least in all my collaborations, in all the collaborations I've done, I write it first. And then I write the whole thing first. And then I give it to composers if I want to work with a composer. And then I rewrite. So it's not like it's set in stone, but I like everyone to kind of know what the idea is, what the theme is before it starts. It doesn't mean that you have to get on board with my vision. I don't really ask that of my composers. I made an offering. And then what I'm asking them to do is respond to the offering with their offering. And then when they respond with their offering, then I respond with an offering to their offering and we go back and forth like that. So that's how I work with all my designers too.

I never tell machine, my costume designer, what to design. I just say, this is what I've made. And then machine designs something for it. And I never say, could I get that in orange? I just wear whatever machine gives me. But I might change a line in the script to work in a way that I feel works better with what he's offering. And then he might add a hat to work better with that line that I shifted. So that's how we tend to work with each other rather than this kind of hierarchical topping everybody into a vision. So to speak to why I love having the text in a book is because you can see my offering. This is what I offered and it's so purely just it without actors, without designers, without the music.

It is what I was thinking and what I put forth. Then you can listen to the double LP or stream online the whole album and then you hear Matt's offering to my offering. And then you can see a production and see the designers and the directors and the performers and how they work with it all. So I love this script because I feel, maybe it's ego. I don't know. I feel really, oh, I'm seen in a way that you're not always seen in a theater production or I feel myself more purely in a way.

[13:03] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Well, that's hard to hear because I do think one could imagine. It's exciting to learn that the libretto sort of lives first. Maybe the final version of the libretto has been like...

[13:55] Taylor Mac: She came in to save the day and the first time she read through the script she had no impulses for the part and I just hired her, and here she is. The first time through she has no impulses and she went right back to the text. The second time she read it, she had all the impulses. Yeah, yeah, she was that good. But then I watched her every single performance go back to the text, and it was, I can't tell you how gratifying that is as a playwright to that someone might say, "Do it this way, do it this way," and then she would always go, "But the text, the text is telling me this." And so then she would always just make a decision based on the text, and as a result, the character was alive and the story that my text was telling was able to meet her.

So she wasn't asking something on a page to adapt to her; she was in curiosity about something on a page. So that's maybe why I like to start with it because I feel like the offering is me. I'm asking the collaborative to be curious about the offering. Yeah, and when a collaborative isn't curious about the offering, that's when it's a disaster.

[15:19] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I guess I'm also wondering about the fact that, or I'm interested in what about the fact that Socrates was condemned to death for heresy and corrupting the youth. All of that sort of, again, like you said, so we're just asked to step into the fact of this hang, this ritual that everyone's in. And also just, yeah, I'm thinking about there's this sort of like subterranean sort of like undercurrent of the play. It doesn't ask us, it's not a biopic; it's not asking us to learn about Socrates's death, but there is something about end of life and something about what he's underneath the pure pleasure of it. There is a kind of rawness that I, that sort of kept me pulled in as an audience member throughout the thing.

And I don't know, I guess that this is, I mean, to me it felt as though there was something about that charge of heresy that was speaking to me, not in a direct way, but in perhaps an indirect way when I was watching it in the moment that I was watching it in. And I don't know, I'm just wondering about what you had to engage in a kind of thought experiment or speculation around what Socrates's final moments might be like and how this hang came to you as an imagination of how that time might be spent.

[16:53] Taylor Mac: The line that really sparked the whole thing was, "Stay a little while longer; there's still time to consider virtue." And this is on his last day of his life, so that's what he wanted more than anything was to hang out with his community and talk about virtue up to the end. And I hope that's what happens in my life. Yeah, so I think that there is a little bit of an imagining it, but it's also a bit of a prayer, a sex magic ritual in some ways to put out—that's a radical term—to put out into an audience that what you're hoping for is that everybody just hangs out and talks about virtue together, yeah, perpetually. That's the big ask. I have a surrogate father, and he was dying of COPD. And in California, the doctors aren't allowed to say it, but you can ask for assisted suicide, and you have to be able to administer it yourself, and up to the very last moment ask for it.

So there's a lot of caveats if you can get it, but he was able to get it. And not dissimilarly to Socrates, his final hours, he wanted to be with his loved ones and talk about virtue. And because he had this opportunity, he had the grace to do that, and there was space for him to be able to do that. It's quite, it's such a blessing what happened to Socrates, even though it was an injustice, even though they killed him, even though it was a group of people that were not unlike MAGA people attacking him, not because they humiliated him, because he called them on their lies, because he questioned them, because he inspired their children to question them, because he slept with a couple of their kids and their adult kids.

And oh, I don't know, but that's the story. Anyways, so that's, we're dealing with this right now, and I find that all very fascinating. But also that he was 80, and he could have said, "Oh, I'm sorry," and he could have gotten out of it, and he chose not to. And I think because in some ways he preferred this assisted suicide as an act towards virtue, as an act towards—there's a line in that, I forget where it is, I don't think it's in the Apology, but he says, "I know there's a general opinion that suicide is that we don't have the right to our own exit." And I wonder, is that true? Yeah, and just the fact that you're sitting and wondering about it on the final days of your life is an act of virtue, is something worthy of exploring and wondering about with a group of people in a theater, especially in song.

[20:06] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah, maybe we can—I have a couple more questions that I could ask you, but maybe we can open it up to you all for a little while and see if there are questions that you have for Taylor. If not, I can keep—I could ask you questions, we can spitball.

[20:22] Audience Member: What's up? I love the way you were talking about collaboration on an individual level, and then you brought up the amazing Julie White, and I was thinking that her first monologue in Gary was so hilarious and how many people there must have been to make sure that it was as you're writing it. It was her, it was a director, and then there was a designer for all of the blood effects. Yeah, and what's the process like with multiple collaborators working towards the one goal of, like, say, a monologue like that or something that's like more of a theatrical experience than any traditional play?

[21:11] Taylor Mac: I'm going to repeat the question for the podcast. Oh, the question was about what's it like for a monologue or a piece of writing that requires multiple collaborators to bring it to bear. I'm not doing a great job of repeating the question. Yeah, what I can say, there was a distinction made between a theatrical event and a more normative play, and I don't see the difference really. I would say if it was Death of a Salesman and you go out there and you have a monologue, you still got a costume designer, you still got a lighting designer, you still got sound design, you still got an audience that you're playing off of when the breathing is happening. It's no different from 24 Decade History of Popular Music, where it's hour 18 and I haven't slept, and the collaborative have piled on whatever they piled on to what I'm doing.

I don't see—I see that all as playwriting and creating plays. I just watched Mondo New York. If you haven't seen it, you should see it. And it's this movie from the early '80s where a young woman is walking through the East Village over a 24-hour period going to different venues and watching people perform. Some of it's really horrible, and some of it is just divine. And Karen Finley has this performance art piece that she does; it's really one of the more extraordinary things captured on film, and I highly recommend seeing it. And it's no different from a play; they just call it performance art because they don't like plays, and playwrights call that performance art because they don't like performance art.

But it's the same exact thing. Yeah, so I would just—I would say it's the same to me. I treat it the same way, and really it just depends. A play like Gary, I wasn't in charge of. I wrote this script, but the production was definitely taken out of my hands. Something like The Hang, I'm in every moment of it. Something like 24 Decade, I'm in every moment of it. It's a different situation. It's just a different situation. I can tell you which one I prefer.

[23:29] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Other questions for Taylor?

[23:33] Audience Member: Yes, the cover art is just gorgeous.

[23:45] Taylor Mac: Oh, thank you. Where did the idea for the cover art come from? I said I wanted the—I what I said I wanted—we had to do a photo shoot, and Machine had to design a costume, and we knew it wasn't going to be the costume for the show, but I said I think what I want is the whole world in the beard of Socrates. That's what I told Machine. That's all I told Machine. And then Machine made that outfit for me, and then Anastasia, who is a makeup designer that I work with, she couldn't come up on the photo shoot day. We took a photo of me dressed like that, and she couldn't come up, and my makeup skills are fine, but they're not the greatest. But she's a really great makeup artist. But anyway, she couldn't come up, so I faked the makeup.

Anyways, long story short, she also paints from photographs. I just asked her if she would paint because I missed her makeup on my face, and so I said, "Would you do a portrait of the photo for the cover?" And we did something similar with Gary, and I thought that would be sweet to continue that process with TCG Publications is to have a painting of something I was lucky enough to have. Oh gosh, what's his name? Who did that? Who does? Who did all the Rolling Stones? Rolling Stone magazine art. And anyways, I had this wonderful artist that Scott Rudin hired for Gary, and so we got to use his art for the cover of the book. You know, Art Spiegel? It wasn't Art Spiegel; it was Art Stedman. Thank you. Amazing. Yeah, so what playwright gets to have Art Stedman on the—Ralph Stedman, thank you. Art Spiegel, Ralph Stedman.

[25:25] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, yes, Hunter S. Thompson.

[25:34] Taylor Mac: Yeah, so that's what's fun. It's when you work outside of the box, you get outside of the box experiences for design too, so that's great. I haven't seen it yet; I can't wait to see it. Where is it?

[25:40] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Oh, great. Other questions?

[25:47] Audience Member: How do you get—I mean, I don't know your work. I saw the—I saw the Gary thing; it sounded really interesting to me, and it's really great. It's probably expensive; I didn't have much money at the time. But I guess my question is, how do you just like trust that, like, you have a wild idea and you go, "It's gonna be good"? Like, what is that thing that you go, "I'm gonna trust this, and I'm gonna run with it"?

[26:07] Taylor Mac: I have what some might call wild ideas. Yeah, they seem kind of normal to me because they come from my normal body and brain, and so I don't see them as wild. I'm always a little surprised when people are going, "No," or shocked by something. But I also, you know, I've existed in a counterculture that I forget sometimes not everybody is part of, so what feels normal to me is radical to other people. What feels neoliberal to me is radical to other people. So there's a—I'm always surprised by the world. I don't know, but I, yeah, how do I—I don't, I've been blessed in my life that it's a blessing and a curse, but my mother was a fundamentalist, very religious, and she did not—she didn't go to the doctor.

So the first time I went to the doctor, I was 18, and she would always tell me that if I prayed to God, I wouldn't feel sick. And so then I, as a kid, I would pray to God, and then I would still feel sick, and then she would say, "Pray to God," and then I would still pray to God, and I'd still feel sick. And so I never had any medicine, and I had strep throat my entire childhood. And so what I learned from that was that my mom didn't know what she was talking about, and so I think—and that I knew what I was talking about. So when I got older and people started...

[27:50] Taylor Mac: Yeah, yeah, it's funny with The Hang because Misha directed a production of Gospel at Colonus and The Hang is definitely in lineage to that show, which is, do you want to explain it?

[28:05] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Gospel at Colonus is a musical that was first produced in the early 80s, written by Lee Brewer and Bob Telson, and it is a sort of gospel rewriting of the story of Oedipus at Colonus. That's the sort of shortest version of it, but I don't know. I want to hear your experience of it.

[28:17] Taylor Mac: I have my little sort of like blurb of it in my brain. But yeah, it is, to me, what feels in conversation with The Hang about it has to do with the way in which that what it means to have translated it into the idiom of gospel. That translation was not just a sort of like musical translation, it translated the whole sort of like orientation and vibe of the thing.

[28:37] Taylor Mac: Like what could a Greek chorus be in the contemporary moment? What is the closest thing that we have to imagining what the experience of seeing a true Greek chorus feel like? Is there something that speaks to us as an oral tradition in the now, even though this was written in the 80s?

[28:57] Taylor Mac: But in our sort of modern sort of musical vocabulary and theatrical vocabulary that can take us to that transcendent place that perhaps it may have been like to watch Oedipus at Colonus back in the day.

[29:17] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, and it's so much about worship. It's so much about how we worship, why we worship.

[29:37] Taylor Mac: The question was whether there's a play of yours that you think young people like high school age folks should know that should be in high school classrooms.

[29:57] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, I think The Hang should be on all the curriculum. If you're learning about Socrates and you're learning about the Greeks, then here's a way in that maybe offers up a way for young people to relate to it in this moment.

[30:17] Taylor Mac: They all like hanging out at parties. They all like hanging out together. That's all that was really happening. But it's like, what are you going to talk about when you're hanging out? Are you going to talk about the latest famous person or are you going to talk about virtue?

[30:37] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: I think that should be in the curriculum. I do have a children's play that hasn't been published yet, but that's about falling in love after bullying. It's a queer children's play set in a ball pit that got shut down in the pandemic because having people hang out in a ball pit during a pandemic was a bad idea.

[30:57] Taylor Mac: But anyways, I think 24 Decade, kids can watch that on HBO. There's a concert doc of that show that I think would be really great for kids to see.

[31:17] Taylor Mac: Bark of Millions is going to be published in the fall, and I think that should be in all the curriculum as well. It's 50 original songs inspired by 50 different queer people from world history. And it shows how theater doesn't have to be linear. You don't have to have a story for it to have the impact of a story.

[31:37] Taylor Mac: Yeah, so I think all of these things. And The Lily's Revenge, I think, is something that I always wanted high schools and colleges to do because I wanted all the different departments to get together and make it together. The dance department and the art department and the music department and the acting department and the history department and the philosophy department.

[31:57] Taylor Mac: There's all these different acts, and everyone can kind of make an act together or parts of it and then bring all their individual people together. It's a five-hour play with 36 people in it. So the idea is that you can just bring all of the departments together to make a piece, which is something that they don't do. There's not that very much cross-pollinization. So yeah, I have tons of ideas for my producer I'm going to hire.

[32:17] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: How are we doing on time? Great, yeah. One or two more questions. Yes, please.

[32:37] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Yeah, so I saw Prosperous Fools instead of going off of what you're talking about. That was a show that I saw that I was just like, why would they agree to do this? Like, they could never have another fundraiser again.

[32:57] Taylor Mac: It's, look how extreme everybody is right now. Everyone is so extreme. So my little plays aren't extreme. With Gary, what was so funny is everyone was like, oh, all those corpses on the stage. The number one TV show at the time was The Walking Dead.

[33:17] Taylor Mac: So millions of people are watching zombies eat human beings every single week. And my little play where there's some dolls on a stage is controversial. So I don't know what to tell you.

[33:37] Taylor Mac: The world is radical, but the theater industry apologizes to no end and won't embrace it, won't invite that world into the theater. And there are many reasons why, but you just have to say there's an audience for this.

[33:57] Taylor Mac: And it's harder than just saying that because they have to change their models of how to get that audience in, but it is possible. I've seen it happen all over the place. Everywhere we took 20 for a decade, nobody knew who we were.

[34:17] Taylor Mac: And the first show, we'd always have half audience. And the second show, it'd be sold out. And the rest of the run, it'd be sold out. And it's just, you see it. People are hungry for a different kind of theater.

[34:37] Taylor Mac: And all we give them is the same thing over and over again. But every so often, something pops in and it's different. And you watch everyone flock to it. I just saw one that just played the other night. It's a musical about a cult that believes if they don't wear butt plugs at all times, that they will be killed in the apocalypse.

[34:57] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Pitch that to a theater. But it was sold out and everyone was screaming and laughing and loving it through the whole thing. So there you go.

[35:11] Taylor Mac: That's amazing. I can't wait to go see it.

[35:20] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Final. Oh, for me? Oh no. It's just been a delight to sit here and chat with you. And I can't wait for The Hang to now enter people's homes and minds in the form of a book.

[35:40] Taylor Mac: It'll be so interesting to see if anyone does it outside of us. Because I want it to be in the world and be done by colleges and high schools and even professional theater. Community theaters, yeah. Philosophy clubs.

[36:01] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Thank you all for joining us.

[36:20] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Coming up next on The Drama Book Show, we're turning our attention to the business of building a career in the arts.

[36:34] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: We'll be joined by legendary casting director James Kalleri and renowned theater educator Robert Cohen to discuss the newly updated ninth edition of Acting Professionally, the definitive guide for actors navigating today's evolving industry.

[36:54] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: From auditioning and representation to self-tapes, streaming, and creating a sustainable career, it's an essential conversation for performers at every step of their journey.

[37:11] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Please leave us a like, a comment, subscribe. Please follow @DramaBookShowPodcast on Instagram and please subscribe to the Drama Book Shop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted whenever we add in-person events to our calendar.

[37:34] Shayok Misha Chowdhury: As always, keep supporting live theater, keep reading, and we'll see you at the bookshop.