This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast.

[0:05] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that.

[0:06] Tonya Pinkins: It's the podcast where you can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: There is nothing I love more than talent.

[0:17] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, it just thrills me.

[0:19] Tonya Pinkins: It gets me high.

[0:21] Tonya Pinkins: It just is like electricity in my body.

[0:24] Tonya Pinkins: And I experienced that last night when I saw the new West Side Story in its first preview on Broadway.

[0:31] Tonya Pinkins: And that's the same way I feel about my next guest.

[0:35] Tonya Pinkins: I got to see 12 hours of his 24-hour musical project.

[0:41] Tonya Pinkins: Please join me in welcoming the inimitable Taylor Mac.

[0:48] Tonya Pinkins: So this is Tonya Pinkins, and uh with the You Can't Say That Podcast, the show where you can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:55] Tonya Pinkins: And as happens when you're in a beautiful space looking out at the New York skyline, and my guests come in, we get to talking.

[1:01] Tonya Pinkins: So I'm already in the midst of a great conversation with my wonderful guest today.

[1:06] Tonya Pinkins: Artist, performance artist, playwright, singer, songwriter, director, choreographer, Taylor Mac.

[1:15] Tonya Pinkins: So let's just take back with the gift.

[1:18] Tonya Pinkins: We were talking about this book, The Gift.

[1:20] Tonya Pinkins: Tell me about it.

[1:20] Taylor Mac: I feel like I read it a long time ago, but what is it?

[1:22] Taylor Mac: I forget who wrote it, but it uh um it's about it he it's about the gift exchange economy as opposed to the commodities exchange commodity and how we're living in this commodities exchange commodity.

[1:36] Taylor Mac: And I would say that we he he uh used an example in one part of the book about um underoos, remember Underoos and um the ha the little um toys and Burger King, the Burger King started that.

[1:50] Taylor Mac: And what they were doing is they were commodifying the bond between the parent and the child.

[1:56] Taylor Mac: So they did a study, they realized that uh that children um uh are the usually the the person who decides when the parent is tired after coming home from work what uh where they were going to eat where the family's going to eat and so if they could get to the child then the child will say Burger King and so then that so they put these toys they said it they presented it like a you know um it's basically uh um uh they presented it like uh uh just a gift or something like that but it actually is um it's kind of a little addiction right hey we get your kid wants to come back to get the next gift and now we got you coming here because your kid is actually dictating this choice.

[2:40] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[2:40] Taylor Mac: And so what they're doing is that so that and and they put the the underoos that they sold them in the supermarket because that was what the study said that that's the the time when the child is with the mother the most is they're not they don't normally go to the department store or something with them but they will go to the supermarket.

[2:58] Taylor Mac: So they put the underoos in the supermarket so the kid could say I want that so the whole the the whole exchange the bond between the mother and the child is turned into a commodity for them.

[3:09] Taylor Mac: It's just the more I mean it's the most horrible thing ever.

[3:11] Taylor Mac: But but it's a wonderful book because it really frames how what the alternatives could be and um and how we can live in a gift exchange economy if we set our minds to it.

[3:25] Tonya Pinkins: Well that also is about like the different websites you can go to where there's just this exchange of uh of things like free stuff, and yeah, you can people are giving away things, and you can if you go pick them up, you can get cars, you can get all kinds of things that people furniture, whatever, where people are like, We're not selling, we are offering things, and there's this way we're preventing litter, etc. by just exchanging things with other people who had the need of the thing we no longer desire.

[3:50] Taylor Mac: And you know, Jackson, Mississippi is the lead in that right now.

[3:53] Tonya Pinkins: Really?

[3:54] Taylor Mac: Yeah, there's all these activists that are down there really changing that.

[3:56] Taylor Mac: I forget what it is.

[3:57] Taylor Mac: Collaborative consumption, uh collaborative, yes, but it's like it's basically a bunch of co-ops that are you know exchanging um amongst each other.

[4:05] Taylor Mac: And I don't really know the details of it.

[4:07] Taylor Mac: So but I'm curious to find out.

[4:09] Taylor Mac: So if you see me on the street, please tell me about it if you know.

[4:12] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, the other piece that you know, this thing about what they're doing with the kids brought up for me is I don't know if you ever heard of this woman, Charlotte Isserby.

[4:20] Taylor Mac: Charlotte Isserby, she may not even be alive anymore, but um she was the head of the department of education under Ronald Reagan.

[4:27] Tonya Pinkins: And that was when they were thinking of getting rid of the Department of Education.

[4:31] Taylor Mac: And so she had this time what a wonderful idea.

[4:34] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[4:35] Tonya Pinkins: Well, they're gonna do it again.

[4:36] Tonya Pinkins: Get rid of education.

[4:37] Tonya Pinkins: That's they're gonna do it.

[4:38] Tonya Pinkins: Um you know, it was black people who said we need compulsory education.

[4:42] Taylor Mac: So they're like, Well, how can we?

[4:44] Taylor Mac: She spent her time uh trying to figure out what was the purpose of the department of education in the first place.

[4:50] Taylor Mac: And what she came, what she discovered in looking through the documents in this building that she was now in control of was that the purpose of the Department of Education was to create compliant citizens.

[5:00] Tonya Pinkins: Uh-huh.

[5:01] Taylor Mac: And they first thought that that could happen.

[5:03] Taylor Mac: No, that's what the documentation said that they were following a Prussian system, and that the first thing they thought would create compliant citizens was war.

[5:14] Tonya Pinkins: And so then World War One happened and they killed all these people, and there was all this trauma.

[5:17] Tonya Pinkins: They're like, Oh, well, that doesn't work.

[5:22] Taylor Mac: But they tried it again.

[5:24] Taylor Mac: No, so then they said, well, what they realized was some people wouldn't be compliant citizens, so they had to figure out who those people were.

[5:31] Tonya Pinkins: I think you and I would probably fall into that.

[5:33] Taylor Mac: I think so.

[5:34] Taylor Mac: And that they had to um find out who those people were, and then they had to track them out of the system.

[5:44] Tonya Pinkins: Uh-huh.

[5:45] Taylor Mac: And she said that was the beginning of no reading, writing, and and arithmetic, but just other courses with fancy names.

[5:51] Taylor Mac: And she said she realized that she was one of those people who wouldn't ever be a com a compliant citizen.

[5:57] Taylor Mac: So she said, then they went a little further, and they realized, well, that wasn't enough or fast enough.

[6:03] Taylor Mac: And they realized that you couldn't have a compliant citizen if they had an authority other than the government.

[6:09] Tonya Pinkins: So that began this period of um breaking the parent-child bond.

[6:14] Taylor Mac: Charter schools.

[6:15] Taylor Mac: Well, breaking the parent-child authority bond and defreezing values.

[6:19] Taylor Mac: Because if there was absolute rights and wrongs, then the government didn't have the ability to say, no, this is right and this is wrong.

[6:25] Taylor Mac: Even you know, your parents can't tell you that.

[6:27] Taylor Mac: The government sets it and they said it as they please.

[6:30] Taylor Mac: And she said that moved into this idea that you can only create a compliant citizen if you can control the neurology.

[6:38] Taylor Mac: And that was this move that we're in right now, which is towards bookless education, because they realized that with a real book, you're engaging and your brain is active, but anything on a screen, it's passive reception.

[6:49] Tonya Pinkins: So you could get people to engage with the surface, where it be it a game or a questionnaire, and you could passively be sending them anything you wanted.

[6:58] Taylor Mac: And that's what it made me think about Burger King, you know, because the surveillance capitalism is about how this thing moved from online into the world where they're constantly collecting our data, tracking our gestures, everything we're doing, and predicting what we're gonna do.

[7:12] Tonya Pinkins: Like they've hacked us.

[7:13] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[7:14] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[7:14] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I'm feeling they have hacked us.

[7:18] Tonya Pinkins: And I uh I'm we're sitting here in this amazing apartment looking at uh the uh uh a smidgen of the New York skyline because the buildings are so big around us, and I'm thinking that uh I I forget where I read this, but uh it is the the saying goes that uh you can tell um what a society is ruled by by uh what the tallest building is.

[7:43] Taylor Mac: So it used to be the church, the cathedrals were the tallest building, right?

[7:46] Taylor Mac: Uh or no uh and then it was it used to be the castles, and then it was the cathedrals.

[7:52] Tonya Pinkins: And and now today it's uh well for a while, yeah.

[7:56] Taylor Mac: So it used to be the government building, then it was the uh the church, and now of course it's the corporate building.

[8:00] Tonya Pinkins: So the corporate building.

[8:01] Tonya Pinkins: Our entire lives are run by these giant buildings around us right now.

[8:06] Taylor Mac: Yeah, that is that they're they have more money than governments have.

[8:09] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah.

[8:10] Taylor Mac: Oh we got we got some construction going on.

[8:14] Tonya Pinkins: We have nonstop construction going on.

[8:17] Taylor Mac: That's but I heard that the New York real estate market has collapsed.

[8:22] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, except they're still making all their money.

[8:24] Taylor Mac: I mean, it's not collapsed.

[8:26] Taylor Mac: I mean, look at it.

[8:27] Taylor Mac: The people are there's non-there's more construction happening right now than there ever has been.

[8:32] Tonya Pinkins: And that's a thing that I find, oh god, we're all we're we're going at it now.

[8:36] Taylor Mac: But that's the thing I find so um fascinating uh about the current race for the presidency and the current conversation is uh uh uh especially regarding Elizabeth Warren and and the economy, and she she wants to tax people at a lower rate, rich people at a lower rate.

[8:55] Tonya Pinkins: Elizabeth Warren does?

[8:56] Taylor Mac: Yeah, she wants to tax them at a lower rate than we taxed rich people in the 70s.

[9:02] Tonya Pinkins: And they're saying that it's some radical thing.

[9:04] Taylor Mac: They're framing her like a radical.

[9:06] Taylor Mac: And I think she just wants us to be reasonable.

[9:10] Tonya Pinkins: It's so interesting to me.

[9:11] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[9:12] Taylor Mac: That the the language of hyperbole as activism, you know.

[9:17] Taylor Mac: I mean, hyperbole is activism, it's agenda, you know.

[9:19] Tonya Pinkins: So have you looked at this book, Winners Take All?

[9:23] Taylor Mac: That is a whole book about how the elite have now taken social justice and they use it as PR.

[9:30] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[9:31] Taylor Mac: So they do some good for a community, and now they have control over the social justice movement, and they can they they decide who are the leaders, and then they make it to make sure that they they are still kept in power.

[9:45] Tonya Pinkins: You know, we have all these philanthropic companies and organizations, and yet we've seen the greatest wealth transfer since the French Revolution has happened in our lifetime.

[9:54] Taylor Mac: And that interests me because you were talking on an interview that I listened to you about this idea that um during the AIDS epidemic, the conservative uh gay people were made spokespersons, and that sort of changed the agenda of what people who were suffering.

[10:13] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I got that.

[10:21] Taylor Mac: Is that uh uh all the radical um imaginative creative leader thinkers um either died of AIDS or were so traumatized by all their friends dying of AIDS that they had to take a step back and heal.

[10:37] Taylor Mac: And and so there was this opening for leadership.

[10:40] Taylor Mac: And so the new leaders were assigned by heterosexuals, and they were chosen, they were people who the heterosexuals felt comfortable with.

[10:50] Tonya Pinkins: So and agendas that the heterosexuals felt comfortable with.

[10:53] Taylor Mac: So they they chose people who were going to really advocate for gay marriage and gays in the military, which was never something that our our the queer leaders that kind of came up from the ground up who were interested in.

[11:15] Tonya Pinkins: That that's fascinating because it it feels akin to the fact that in Native American cultures, you uh speak your opinion not speaking is as powerful a statement as speaking.

[11:26] Taylor Mac: And so the people that the Americas made treaties with were the people who came and spoke who were this small minority of people when the majority of Native people did not speak, which was their no.

[11:37] Tonya Pinkins: We don't want a treaty with you, and so we have this history of relations and agreements with a group of people who have a different understanding of what language means, and we just ignored their language.

[11:48] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[11:48] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[11:49] Taylor Mac: Yeah, there's a part in 24 Decade that we do where uh um this uh Native American uh two spirits uh person um is going to a missionary school for the first time, and uh and she he she uses the pronoun she.

[12:10] Taylor Mac: She she thinks that to be respectful, you say and you listen and and you consider and you wonder for a very long time before you answer, and the teacher interprets that as slow, and so she's she's labeled, you know, unintelligent instead of actually somebody who considers, you know, because they're right.

[12:33] Taylor Mac: So that's I mean, that's the thing I I'm trying to do.

[12:37] Taylor Mac: And it's funny to say that on a on a podcast where I'm asked about to talk, but but I'm trying to just take my time to consider things more and not just, you know, I feel like there's this plague of opinions in the world.

[12:53] Taylor Mac: And I'm just like, how can I just be a little bit more socratic method about things, just ask more questions and just wonder for a long time.

[13:05] Taylor Mac: Yeah, and that reminds me of the fact that, you know, when they actually did a deeper sort of analysis of why are Asians supposedly better at math than Americans, what they found was that Americans spend about 10 minutes and then they can't figure it out and they move on, and Asians are like, they just sit with it until something clicks, and that might be 45 minutes. They're not in a hurry and they're not deciding that it didn't come to me quickly, so I can't do it. They're like, okay, well, let me just wrestle with this for a lot longer time than an American is willing to wrestle with something they don't get.

[13:41] Tonya Pinkins: We like to fake it till we make it, yeah.

[13:43] Taylor Mac: And we sell it to the world.

[13:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, what are we gonna do?

[13:49] Taylor Mac: Well, I am actually sort of very positive about it because I do think that there is an evolutionary force inside of everything that is always moving towards higher levels of order. Even what looks like destruction to us is some other creation coming forward. I just believe that. So it keeps me sane, you know, looking to see what is birthing out of this, you know, a lightning storm or the decay of a tree. It's now nurturing a whole forest of new trees that are gonna happen.

[14:23] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah. We had a huge fire up in our—I have a country place because I'm fancy now. And we had a huge fire and almost burned the house down and like, you know, burned down, I mean, about a hundred trees. And but within a year, I mean, you still see the charcoal dead trees are up everywhere and everything, but within a year, you're seeing new life come to it. So it does give you hope and change is a good thing and all that stuff, but also the tragedy is real, you know.

[15:04] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I don't—I think that that's to me what truth is to me, is that it can hold polarities. You know, that the tragedy is real and the new birth is real too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're both real and they are both the truth.

[15:21] Tonya Pinkins: Well, and there's—I mean, since tragedy is inevitable, like we might as well try to figure out what to do with it, right?

[15:30] Taylor Mac: That's the only way to live. Like, how do you live a virtuous life in an unvirtuous world, right? Is like the question I just continually ask over and over. Since I did that play, A Good Person of Szechwan, which that's the main question of the play is how do you live a virtuous life in an unvirtuous world? And I just keep going back to that.

[15:51] Tonya Pinkins: You know, I—I someone asked me recently about the GOP and Trump and saying, well, don't we have to listen to their side of things and don't we have to see and aren't you—aren't you just as bad as they are if you don't listen? I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, because they lie. So they know they are lying, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying. So it's not an actual debate, it's not an actual conversation, it's somebody listening to and trying to engage in with lies.

[16:29] Taylor Mac: So that is an unvirtuous world. What we have to do is try to figure out how to live virtuously within that unvirtuous world. And what's fascinating about the hearings is to see how everyone's trying to do it. You know, some people are placating, some people are trying to get every detail, all the information. Some people are—some people are going to their superiors and try to get their superiors to deal with it. You know, everyone's navigating how to live in this crazy unvirtuous world. It's super fascinating to me.

[17:04] Tonya Pinkins: I'm gonna ask Beatrice, are we gonna have to redo this whole thing?

[17:07] Taylor Mac: Like, no, I think we're gonna be able to just like because the volume of the mics are enough, I think we may be able to put the volume of the microphone.

[17:16] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, I just don't want to like have sat here and talked to you for an hour, and they're like, oh yeah, we couldn't do any of that. But the Mr. Sound is the unvirtuous world coming in.

[17:28] Taylor Mac: Well, I feel like that's what the appeal of The Walking Dead is, like in this area where the anti-hero is in most of the shows. Like, you know, we like all these characters who are just crooked and rotten, and in The Walking Dead, it's a world where zombies are forever. When you die, you become one, and yet people are trying to figure out how to live, how to raise their children, how to be good people when zombies are forever. I mean, to me, that is the appeal of the zombie world for me. The zombies are the metaphor for anything bad in anybody's world.

[18:00] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[18:00] Taylor Mac: I just—I'm a big zombie fan.

[18:03] Tonya Pinkins: I'm a big zombie fan.

[18:05] Taylor Mac: Did you know I was a zombie on Fear of the Walking Dead?

[18:07] Tonya Pinkins: I did know that actually. I forgot it.

[18:10] Taylor Mac: I was Martha the Filthy.

[18:12] Tonya Pinkins: I loved it.

[18:13] Taylor Mac: They bore me. If I'm totally honest at this point, I'm like, okay, now it feels like that.

[18:17] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, they're not coming.

[18:19] Taylor Mac: I'm like, when are they gonna come back to the talking zombies? There were talking zombies in like the original zombie movies, and nobody's doing talking zombies again.

[18:26] Tonya Pinkins: They tried.

[18:27] Taylor Mac: They tried this season, I think, or last season or something.

[18:30] Tonya Pinkins: Those weren't real zombies, those were people dressed in zombie clothes.

[18:32] Taylor Mac: That's not true.

[18:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, they thought it would be cheesy to have them actually talk, so they made us—no, no, no. Remember in Return of the Living Dead, the zombies killed the ambulance people and they're like, send more paramedics? Or people were like, they put these hooks in the zombie, and they're like, why do you try to eat our brains? And she was like, the pain, the pain of being dead. You can feel being dead, yes, and brains leave the pain of being dead, you know.

[19:04] Taylor Mac: Oh, did you—so you had fun being on that show?

[19:07] Tonya Pinkins: It was the most exciting thing I've ever done on television.

[19:10] Taylor Mac: Really?

[19:11] Tonya Pinkins: I dreamed of it. I told my agents when I met them anything zombie, I want to be on it. And when I got it, it was like, yes, this is what I want to do. It was the first time on television that I got to be the quote star for a moment for a day because I was the villain, and so I got to be a villain, and it was like, oh, this is what this is like. I like this. Now I've experienced that. I can move on and try to do something else in my life.

[19:34] Taylor Mac: Isn't that interesting? I find that fascinating, that thing where like you have this obsession, you want to do this thing. And sometimes I go, the thing that I wanted when I was 14 is not necessarily what I want now. But the obsession is there, and you can't let it go until you do it.

[19:54] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, it's so fast. You gotta have that thing that you want, you know.

[19:57] Taylor Mac: Yeah, it's like when I want a specific thing to eat, nothing is gonna satisfy that itch until it's that thing.

[19:57] Tonya Pinkins: That thing.

[20:04] Taylor Mac: Yeah, and then you have to get your scene. I don't want that. Well, you did want it, and you had it, and you found out, okay, that was enough. Yeah, you know, moving on to the next thing now.

[20:12] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[20:13] Taylor Mac: That was—that's how I felt about Broadway.

[20:16] Tonya Pinkins: Me too.

[20:20] Taylor Mac: I always tell people, I know you think Broadway is to be all and end all, but there's some other things.

[20:27] Tonya Pinkins: Oh yeah, some other things, so but you gotta go find that out for yourself.

[20:31] Taylor Mac: I know. It was a wonderful world out there of performance, there's thrilling stuff, and they don't even make you work as hard.

[20:40] Tonya Pinkins: Well, you brought us to Broadway, so you know I know some things about your show Gary, and I want to talk about them because most people don't even know about them.

[20:49] Taylor Mac: I know, but oh, I don't know if I feel comfortable talking.

[20:53] Tonya Pinkins: Well, we could talk about it. We talk about it, and if you find that it isn't, we'll cut it out if we talk about something and you're like, oh no, we can't say that. But you know, I saw Gary and I saw it in previews, and you had shared with me, and George shared with me that there was supposed to be a moment of a live black baby at the end of the play that didn't—that most people never got to see.

[21:09] Taylor Mac: I think one audience got to see it.

[21:12] Tonya Pinkins: One audience, yeah. So tell us about the impulse of that.

[21:16] Taylor Mac: Well, I wanted there to be a moment at the end of the play where the end of the play is different every night, dictated by something that can't be controlled. You know, and I wanted that to be a black baby. Because in Titus Andronicus, there's a black baby, and I wanted all the characters to have to cede their control to something and the audience to something that might scare them, that might make them nervous for the baby, that made them question the ethics of even having a baby on stage, that wasn't there to make them feel sentimental necessarily. Maybe it might one night be cute, and everyone goes, ah, you know, okay, that's how that night ended. But I wanted the show to end differently every single night.

[22:11] Tonya Pinkins: And the circumstances of our rehearsal process was such that we basically were in panic mode from the start, and there was just—it wasn't prioritized to rehearse with the baby, and so then the baby got thrown in at the last minute and people didn't feel comfortable and didn't know how to handle the improv of that moment and the delicacy and the responsibility of holding a baby. It would be scary, I would think. The irony though is that there was another baby in the same season in that Irish play.

[22:49] Taylor Mac: Yes, you know, a cute little white baby that always performed cute, you know, and the whole audience went, ah, every single night, which was just to me cloying, but manipulative. And I guess I wanted a moment of that we can't control, you know, that we can frame, but we can't control. Is that like that excites me? And so it sounds like you're saying, I mean, and maybe it's really just that Broadway wasn't ready to have that because it is such a commercial model and it is kind of a standardization and I question that, but yeah, I think the circumstances of our rehearsal process was just never going to allow it to be easy.

[23:32] Tonya Pinkins: Did you do it somewhere again? Because I think it's an exciting thing to bring to an audience to make them have to actively engage.

[23:38] Taylor Mac: I will say that I saw that play, what was it called? The Irish play.

[23:41] Tonya Pinkins: Irish one.

[23:44] Taylor Mac: I can't remember, but I liked it.

[23:48] Tonya Pinkins: The Ferryman.

[23:49] Taylor Mac: The Ferryman. And I was not in awe of them. I was like, there's a baby at the edge of the stage. But the baby rolls over. What is going on? There's a baby. Oh, so you were concerned.

[23:52] Tonya Pinkins: I was like, there's a baby on the edge of the freaking stage. I did like that she walked down those steps, those giant steps holding that baby. I was like, oh, that's dangerous. Okay, all right then, you know.

[24:08] Taylor Mac: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it wasn't a ooh moment for me. It was like, okay, okay, what's gonna happen?

[24:09] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah.

[24:09] Taylor Mac: For me, it was like a what's gonna happen. And what I loved about that play is we had our bunny rabbit, we had a real—what was it, a swamp, a goose, you know, we had a fire, like that's what I loved about that play. It was like, yeah, this is some real stuff is happening here. They brought the real stuff in there.

[24:30] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, to me, it was just still framed a little bit too much or controlled a little too much. I don't know. Maybe your night the baby cried. Did the baby cry?

[24:40] Taylor Mac: I don't think the baby—I saw it a couple times, and the baby did not ever cry when I was there.

[24:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, they trained that baby.

[24:47] Taylor Mac: What do you—how do you train a baby?

[24:52] Tonya Pinkins: They did some techniques to like make—to like get the baby comfortable in front of an audience and to da da da da and you all didn't have time to train your baby.

[25:01] Taylor Mac: I didn't want us to train the baby. I wanted us to train the actors how to deal with the baby.

[25:11] Tonya Pinkins: You need to have gone and got that little baby from The Ferryman and put some blackface on it.

[25:18] Taylor Mac: Could have been like Cynthia Nixon going from one theater to the other.

[25:21] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, we should have just been.

[25:22] Taylor Mac: Because your play was a short play.

[25:24] Tonya Pinkins: And then he could have gone back and done his little part in acting.

[25:26] Taylor Mac: If we had done that, we'd still be running.

[25:33] Tonya Pinkins: Oh God.

[25:36] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I mean, it's in the script, so hopefully people will do it, you know. I mean, you know how it is on Broadway. People do things on Broadway, and then that sets the precedent, and then you've got to fight the way that your play has been rewritten by people that aren't you.

[25:50] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[25:51] Taylor Mac: For the rest of the play's—you know, Cheryl West told me her play Jar the Floor, people kept wanting to bring it to New York, not even to Broadway. And she was like, this play is paying my mortgage. Just playing the regions for five years. It is paying my mortgage. I do not wish to, you know, affect my livelihood by somebody in New York saying something bad about it and now, oh, it's been said, now we don't want to do your play anymore.

[26:14] Taylor Mac: It's a play that's doing so well. It's an unfortunate thing. It's interesting. Yeah, my play here has had I think 72 productions now around the world. And I have made way more money off of that than I did working on Broadway. But even before it had all those productions I made more money off of that. I guess having an off-Broadway play at Playwrights Horizons is more lucrative than Broadway. I mean because on Broadway everybody wants a piece of the pie. So you gotta give this percentage and this percentage and this percent even the guild wants you to give them a percentage when you're on Broadway. Oh yeah and they all take it from the playwright salary not the producer's salary from the playwrights.

It's amazing. Wow and someone was telling me recently about like in sometimes on Broadway you have to the playwright has to give a percentage to the directors too. Well, George and George Wolf and who's the other one Joe Mantello. Yeah Joe Mantello are the two that demand that you know and they justify it by saying that they're really working as dramaturgical directors so it's their I guess it's their drama dramaturgy fee but I wouldn't choose to do that again because I just I made so little you know I worked for a year and had to say no to everything. I mean luckily I got a fancy grant so I'm fine but I had to say no to everything while I was working on that and contractually you know I couldn't work in New York City other than that and then I had to cut my salary even and all my royalties and everything so so it was definitely it was a learning the school of hard knocks experience you know the school of school of hard bourgeois hard knocks.

You know, I think that people are so I think sometimes I feel like we want the romance of things and that we aren't even interested in the reality of it. It's like the fact that people think you're on Broadway. It's fabulous, it's wonderful. And it's like they don't care about the reality that you could make a lot of money in the regions and around the world. Like, but you're on Broadway. Yeah. Isn't that for like that? I'm on Broadway, but we lost all the money. But you were on Broadway. Yeah, yeah. You know, yeah. And that's the difference like here has a role for a trans man or a genderqueer actor. And so it's been done 72 times by 72 different trans men or genderqueer actors have played the role, and a vast majority of them have never had access to their professional theater in their town.

So that's not the kind of thing if it had been on Broadway and been a huge hit, then maybe that would have happened all around the world. But um, but that's that happened, you know that happened. And so I don't know. I think that's I didn't intend for that to happen. I didn't set out for that to happen, but it's this beautiful result of writing this play and Playwrights Horizons doing it, and everybody then wanting you know that that weird thing that happens where somebody in New York does a play and then everybody wants to do it. Yeah, and you don't have control over that. Like it's just was the moment it was supposed to be a synchronicity about that. Yeah, it's sweet. So I that's just to say that really good things can happen from both Broadway and off Broadway, and but Broadway is not the only thing. Nobody knows about the presenting world in the actor world, in the New York theater world, very few people are aware of the presenting world.

[29:46] Tonya Pinkins: What's the presenting world?

[29:47] Taylor Mac: So BAM is a presenting house for the most part. They're I think they're getting into producing now, but um so there are all these festivals all around the world, and they're doing all the incredible work. Um it's where Robert Wilson and and Lucent to Child and Philip Glass and all of them, you know, would work and it's where I work primarily. It's just churning the world doing playing these gorgeous theaters performing in the presenting world and you do a couple shows a week and you do you have to fund that yourself or are the presenters providing the finances to bring you there and put your show up it depends on the on the um it depends on the festival or the presenter so with something like 24 Decade I work with a production company called Pomegranate Arts and they did Einstein on the beach and they're just wonderful and they're they're family and they um so they produce and then the presenter we were just at the Berliner Fischspiele in Berlin and and the Berliner Fischspieler kind of joined with them because 24 Decade is so huge to make that all happen.

So it's um it's kind of a co-production. I mean we produce the show we make the show and then they kind of are responsible for housing and and um the Berlin Fischbilo for housing and and paying salaries and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes they just give you a big blanket fee and then you have to figure out how to divide it up and sometimes they provide more than that you know so something like the under the radar festival at the public is is is working under a presenting model. Um you know and there's there's pros and cons to it because you you kind of have to make it yourself and you don't um a lot of people don't have a lot of support, don't have producers to help them do that. But if you have a producer or you are a producer and you and you make it, there's it gives you more power over the art.

Um you don't have to put up with a uh uh can I say bullshit? You can you don't have to put up with a smidgen of the bullshit that you have to put up with when you're working um in neoliberal uh American theater.

[32:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, no, that's that's real. Um so I I know I'm a friend of Kate Riggs, and Kate told me that actually Gary was written for her and Christine and you to do.

[32:16] Taylor Mac: Ah well, I mean, I wouldn't say I wasn't written for for Kate, but it was uh but I cast her in the first reading, and I love her and I think she's wonderful. Um that you intended that to be enough color person and that you were going to play Gary.

[32:32] Taylor Mac: I was supposed to play Gary. I wrote Gary for myself. I wrote Janice for Christine, and I what and I wasn't sure what I was really doing with Carol. You know, I was trying I was experimenting with Carol and I was trying to figure it out. Um I didn't know part of the character is is the fragility of white guilt. So I wasn't sure how if that if casting a person of color would change that narrative to a degree that I didn't like, you know, or if I needed to let go of that narrative just so that I didn't have a um all white cast, which I don't like.

[33:14] Tonya Pinkins: We have I have the building manager here to be figured out where the noise is going from.

[33:20] Taylor Mac: Okay. Okay, sure.

[33:21] Tonya Pinkins: She's like contacted the building manager.

[33:24] Taylor Mac: Amazing. I like these pants. May I touch them?

[33:26] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, but it's not like me touching your hair, but I wanted to know what the fabric is.

[33:31] Taylor Mac: You cut your hair.

[33:32] Tonya Pinkins: I did. I'd after playing that zombie because I was like uh walls on my desk. Hi.

[33:37] Taylor Mac: Like someone drilling right above us.

[33:41] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[33:42] Taylor Mac: Thank you. If you want to like stay here until you hear it.

[33:46] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, just to like it.

[33:49] Taylor Mac: Okay. Thank you.

[33:54] Tonya Pinkins: They might be done. Wouldn't that be lovely? They were going at it though.

[33:57] Taylor Mac: They were going at it. Should we keep going?

[34:02] Tonya Pinkins: Oh. Um, so what you know, I understand the Broadway things, but I want to understand it from you, the artist's point of view. I mean, at the point that Gary was going to Broadway, you're a MacArthur genius, you've won awards all over the decision to not have you in the lead. You're your force in and of itself.

[34:19] Taylor Mac: Well, yeah. You know, that's it was presented to me that the producer didn't feel that this was the kind of play that would succeed without stars. Without a star person, which is this new thing. You've got to be a TV star or movie star or something in order to sell tickets on Broadway kind of thing. This new model we have. And that's it's it's not invalid. Okay, for a play particular for a brand new play that's a little tricky. You know, a little I don't think it's that untraditional because it seems to me very Greek. You know, I was like, this is just Aristophanes, you know, combining verse and and lowbrow humor and highbrow humor and squishing them in the same play is is Elizabethan, is every you know like everything that we've we say is theater is supposed to be.

So agreed. So I don't uh I didn't see it tricky that way, but um but uh Rudin felt that it was it was a tricky one and that it would need a star. And so I I made the choice, it was my choice. You know, I could have said, no, I'm gonna do this at the Hero Arts Center where I was originally gonna do it, um or and and play the lead. And I thought, you know, um these opportunities don't come around every day. And I've never done this thing before, and I wrote this play, and I can do it again in the future. I'm not gonna age out of the part. And so I said, why not? And you know, I'm a talent whore, so I love a talented person. And when Nathan Lane was suggested, I think he's you know, extraordinarily talented, and um, and I like learning from watching as well.

So I just thought, well, why not do this? Why not why not have Nathan Lane play it? And I also remember Terrence McNally one time saying when they made the movie of the rink, um, he demanded that it be all people that you know had been in the play on Broadway and stuff, and um, and they were like, no, no, no, we want it to be, you know, Barbara Streisand and this person and that person, and and he was like, No, no, it must be the original people, you know, and and that was great of him. Um, and at the same time he was expressing a little regret. He was like, it would have been fabulous to have Barbara Streisand in my movie, you know. So, you know, there was this that part of my voice was going, Well, why don't you just see?

I know what it's like to work with me, but I don't know what it's like to work with Nathan Lane and and to see that happen. Um, so it was a fascinating experience. You know, I definitely don't want to I mean, so this is the thing I learned on Broadway. Off Off Broadway is basically the same. So I was told that they didn't want to produce the play without a star on Broadway, and then off off Broadway, I was told they couldn't produce it with me because I'm equity. My a different play of mine, and they're it they were a non-equity company. And so both experiences I was told I can't be in the play that for the part that I wrote for myself, if they're going to do it, you know, and it's my choice to either go down that road with them or to not.

And in both cases, I I've chosen to go down the road, you know. So that's I don't I don't have any resentment for that. But I did have a little bit of jealousy when I saw my friend Heidi Shrek, you know, go from off Broadway to off Broadway to Broadway with her entire company for what the Constitution means to me, and have a great success. There was this part of me that was like, oh, I wish people would just I wish I would have just demanded people take a chance on me, you know. I did have that regret. But and I'm I'm blabbing because I had coffee, but I also don't think Gary was the kind of play that would have transferred, you know. I think it would have had its run off off Broadway, maybe transferred to off Broadway, but it wouldn't have transferred to the um any any more than that. Um and because I'm just I'm not I'm not telling stories that are supporting the status quo. And that's like well, there's that's the only play on Broadway that wasn't centered around a status quo.

[38:43] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, you know, that's there's that.

[38:45] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[38:47] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[38:49] Taylor Mac: There's that winner's take all. Like, you know.

[38:53] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I mean, I I love Hamilton. I've seen it 13 times.

[38:58] Taylor Mac: But you know it's wonderful. Hamilton preceded the movie Get Out, but in hindsight, I'm like, it's get out.

[39:00] Tonya Pinkins: It's get out.

[39:06] Taylor Mac: It is get out.

[39:07] Tonya Pinkins: It's get out.

[39:08] Taylor Mac: It's get out.

[39:12] Taylor Mac: And I was like, oh shit.

[39:14] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[39:14] Taylor Mac: I love it, but it is get out.

[39:16] Tonya Pinkins: I know.

[39:16] Taylor Mac: And that's how they trick you.

[39:18] Tonya Pinkins: That's how they get you.

[39:19] Taylor Mac: They give you some amazing songs and amazing lyrics and incredible polish, you know.

[39:27] Tonya Pinkins: And amazing talent.

[39:28] Taylor Mac: And I think it's the most polished piece of Broadway I've ever seen. I think it's remarkable. Remarkable. I love it. But it's about how great capitalism is.

[39:38] Tonya Pinkins: And how great white people are.

[39:39] Taylor Mac: The white people who were slaveholders who founded our country. I mean, that's one of the stories. No, there's a lot of stories. But you know, like in the mixtape, you got the song that you know didn't make it to Broadway or even to Off Broadway about, you know, what they were gonna do with the slaves, which the plan was at first to send them all back to Africa, and then Frederick Douglass was like, no, no, we are as American as anybody is American, and he believed that if we fought in the war, then that would make our claim to citizenship.

[40:04] Tonya Pinkins: It did not, it just meant that there would be generations of brown people who would be cannon fodder.

[40:08] Taylor Mac: But Frederick Douglass really believed that, you know, if we fight for this land, then that secures our claim for citizenship because being born here certainly did not. Freaking Frederick Douglass.

[40:20] Tonya Pinkins: So that was in the original show, and they cut it for—there's a whole song about this argument about, you know, what are we gonna do about the slaves? What are we gonna do about the slaves? And then they're basically agreeing to postpone thinking about that for some time.

[40:32] Taylor Mac: It's a great little, it's like one of those congressional conferences where they're having the arguments, it's one of those kind of putting that argument in the brown bodies makes it performance art. Not a musical on Broadway.

[40:49] Tonya Pinkins: Right, right.

[40:53] Taylor Mac: Then it becomes, oh, we're the deconstruction of it. Suddenly it's what's happening, you know. So they had to cut that.

[41:02] Tonya Pinkins: Well, yeah, yeah, you might be right about that. I don't know.

[41:05] Taylor Mac: But you can get it on the mixtape. I wasn't a fly on the wall, so I don't know why they did things, but yeah, and there are people who are actually changing their name in order to have names of people of color in order to be in the show.

[41:17] Tonya Pinkins: I actually have, you know, I go and see it because I really love it, and I love seeing all these young people coming up and getting these opportunities. And I saw it on the road with a girl who had—you can still see her entire internet history as who she really is, but now she has a Latina last name.

[41:33] Taylor Mac: So that's like, hey, you know, well, good.

[41:43] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know if it's good.

[41:45] Taylor Mac: It's get out.

[41:46] Tonya Pinkins: Well that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[41:48] Taylor Mac: Oh, is she a white woman?

[41:50] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[41:51] Taylor Mac: Oh, oh, I thought she was a big one.

[41:52] Tonya Pinkins: No, no, no, she's a white woman who gave herself a Latina name.

[41:55] Taylor Mac: No.

[41:56] Tonya Pinkins: So she could be in Hamilton.

[41:58] Taylor Mac: No.

[41:58] Tonya Pinkins: And you can still see the footprint online of who she really is.

[42:02] Taylor Mac: Oh no.

[42:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yes. She's out on tour. She's wonderful, but it's like, you know, people like, I want to be in that show. Can't we have one damn show?

[42:14] Taylor Mac: Well, I tell this story in 24 Decade too, where this woman, I was in Minneapolis and this woman, she was like, Why do you have to dress like you dress? You know, in my drag, she saw a performance of mine. And she was drunk and she was a board member, and she was, you know, ah. And she said, Why you have such a good voice? You should be on Broadway. You should be in Hamilton.

[42:37] Tonya Pinkins: I was like, um maybe you're saying I should play the king. I don't know, maybe I don't know.

[42:41] Taylor Mac: You should be, yeah.

[42:45] Tonya Pinkins: She said she literally said this. You should be in something. Why do you have to talk about politics? You should be in something fun like Hamilton.

[42:56] Taylor Mac: I was like, you do realize the whole show is about politics.

[43:00] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[43:01] Taylor Mac: But she did not realize that.

[43:03] Tonya Pinkins: No, no.

[43:04] Taylor Mac: It was just like I got to see those singing and dancing darkies.

[43:09] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I didn't say it.

[43:15] Taylor Mac: Yeah, sometimes that's what it feels like a little bit.

[43:19] Tonya Pinkins: So, are you fiending for a Broadway again?

[43:23] Taylor Mac: Oh, sure. I mean, I would do it in a heartbeat. You know, it's not like, oh yeah, I can't wait to get back. Well, you know, it's just like it's that thing of once you do it, you break the seal, and then you can decide if you want to do it.

[43:35] Tonya Pinkins: You don't have that 14-year-old going, yeah, you have to do this thing.

[43:39] Taylor Mac: That desperation goes away. So now I have now if somebody approaches me and they say, You want to do Broadway, but you can't be in your own show, I could be like, No, I've done that, been there, didn't work out for me so much.

[43:52] Tonya Pinkins: Or it worked out in some ways and didn't in other ways.

[43:55] Taylor Mac: And so I can make that choice instead of living in that longing, you know. I think that's a maturity issue that a lot of people don't understand that oftentimes in the—in to me in the good way, when you get the thing you've longed for, whether it goes well or doesn't go well, hopefully you get the maturity that the next time it comes around you have an option of choice rather than being led by a compulsion.

[44:27] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, and I suppose the there's this side of me that judges my behavior and my decisions because I'm why do I have to learn by—why can't I, you know, make those ethical choices before, you know, and of course I do all the time, but in this particular instance, I wanted that. I wanted the experience.

[44:54] Taylor Mac: Or, you know, to quote Hamilton, I wanted to be in the room where it happens, and then I turned and turned out oh, the room is not as interesting as this other room I created.

[45:02] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, the thing that I found fascinating about the Broadway experience is it was a three-character play, 90 minutes long, and 24 Decade, it's 200 people in it. It's 24 hours long.

[45:21] Taylor Mac: And we worked on it for about—well, now we're going on 10 years. And Gary was worked on for a year, you know, and there was just like an inch of drama on 24 Decade over all those years, hardly any drama, no drama, and I carry a three-character play, 90 minutes, more drama than I've ever had in my entire life, and so it really tells me, oh, the room can be different.

[45:48] Tonya Pinkins: You can create a room that doesn't have all that high drama, but you have to figure it out, you know.

[45:54] Taylor Mac: Not that the drama is always bad, because sometimes the drama leads you to epiphany, a catharsis, you know, but you can figure out a working structure that at least gives you your joy, you know.

[46:12] Tonya Pinkins: Two things I want to say that came up while I was listening to you. One is there's that thing that goes, um, experience is something you get just after you need it.

[46:21] Taylor Mac: Yes, exactly.

[46:25] Tonya Pinkins: And um I have this theory about those big rooms, uh-huh. Those big rooms.

[46:30] Taylor Mac: And my theory is kind of in that winner's take all thing that um the drama is currency in those rooms.

[46:42] Tonya Pinkins: And um it is and um the people who um can spend the currency of that are the puppet masters, the rulers, and so um the people who bring the drama, that is a sign that you can be controlled.

[47:00] Taylor Mac: And so you are of great value because I know what buttons to push, I know what I need to do to get you to do what I want, I know how to pacify you.

[47:07] Tonya Pinkins: But coming into those rooms with clarity and a lack of drama, um, that's actually kind of a frightening and a scary thing.

[47:15] Taylor Mac: Like if you actually walk in those rooms and you know what you want in your—that is like, oh, that's difficult.

[47:19] Tonya Pinkins: Like if you want—if you're like a drug addict, we'll get you some drugs, or you cry all the time, we can handle like you scream at people, fabulous. We know exactly how to push your buttons to get you to show up and pay and make and make money for us.

[47:33] Taylor Mac: That's yeah, my observer experience of, you know, people who are incredibly talented, but bring a lot of damn drama, and I'm like, and I'm different.

[47:41] Tonya Pinkins: You think it's just difficult?

[47:42] Taylor Mac: You have—I don't bring drama into the room, but you know, there's just lines you're not gonna cross with me.

[47:47] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, we're not gonna cross them.

[47:49] Taylor Mac: That's difficult.

[47:51] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, not drama. My drama stays on the stage.

[47:55] Taylor Mac: It's not happening that stage.

[47:58] Tonya Pinkins: Amazing.

[48:01] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you were there that night. I exploded that night that you came, and I've never done that in all of my time.

[48:10] Tonya Pinkins: It was probably necessary.

[48:11] Taylor Mac: I was necessary. I was—I had some stuff that I was squashing down for months and months and months.

[48:16] Tonya Pinkins: And um I don't like that feeling.

[48:19] Taylor Mac: I mean, I—but I what I learned was that the drama is currency, that it—and it is that the way that some of it was working out, the process was working out was that the bigger drama was the bigger disaster was the thing that got the attention.

[48:47] Tonya Pinkins: And so if I—in order to solve the problem that I was having, I had to create a bigger drama.

[48:57] Taylor Mac: Right?

[48:57] Tonya Pinkins: No, that's real, and it—I was an ugly feeling, but um but it got the result.

[49:06] Taylor Mac: That is real.

[49:07] Tonya Pinkins: It was the first time, and it broke, and then things got better after that, actually.

[49:11] Taylor Mac: So it was a lesson too, but I don't really want to have a lot of people.

[49:15] Tonya Pinkins: It's not a good feeling like that.

[49:16] Taylor Mac: And see, for me as a black woman, uh-huh, it's like people are always trying to push me to that.

[49:16] Tonya Pinkins: Uh-huh.

[49:22] Taylor Mac: And I can't go there because then I'm a trope.

[49:24] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[49:24] Taylor Mac: You know what I'm saying?

[49:25] Tonya Pinkins: But they always trying to push me to that.

[49:27] Taylor Mac: They want me to cuss somebody out. And it's like, nope, I have not ever given anybody that.

[49:33] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[49:34] Taylor Mac: Because then they can write me off. Then they know who I am, then I'm predictable.

[49:37] Tonya Pinkins: So it's almost like a point of honor that that is something you will never be able to say about me.

[49:43] Taylor Mac: Uh-huh.

[49:44] Tonya Pinkins: But I think it has to do with being in this body.

[49:46] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[49:47] Tonya Pinkins: That I don't get to do that.

[49:48] Taylor Mac: Because I can read your thing.

[49:51] Tonya Pinkins: You get one time.

[49:54] Taylor Mac: George will tell you that.

[49:55] Tonya Pinkins: You have to have that pick that moment when you're gonna have that fit.

[49:58] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[49:58] Tonya Pinkins: And yes.

[49:59] Taylor Mac: So that's what I had. I have my one fit.

[50:01] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[50:01] Taylor Mac: No, you do just have that moment. As a person of color, I think you really only get one.

[50:06] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I did. I had my one time, it was MOTHER COURAGE.

[50:09] Taylor Mac: Did you?

[50:09] Tonya Pinkins: But it wasn't a cussing anybody out. It was just a way that was unconscious.

[50:15] Taylor Mac: I mean, I don't—I don't know what the process was like for you, but it was it was an unconscious concept.

[50:26] Tonya Pinkins: To say the least.

[50:27] Taylor Mac: To say the least, and it's been, you know, Brandon Jacob Jenks and I are working on a new MOTHER COURAGE.

[50:33] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, you are, okay.

[50:33] Taylor Mac: Because I'm a mother, and so I have such a deep—first of all, I love Brecht, and I have—I feel such a deep response to that.

[50:42] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly.

[50:43] Taylor Mac: The kind of actor that you should be doing, Brad.

[50:45] Tonya Pinkins: But I disagree with pretty much everybody's interpretation of it.

[50:48] Taylor Mac: Oh, yeah, it was everybody's interpretation.

[50:50] Tonya Pinkins: Everybody's translation.

[50:52] Taylor Mac: And so we're like going back to the German and mining it and trying to figure out.

[50:56] Tonya Pinkins: Like to me, the power of that text is Brecht took this thing that is so mundane to most people in the world, but every mother is living it everywhere in the world.

[51:08] Taylor Mac: You bring these beings into the world that you would die for. You spend your life trying to protect them, but the fact is they do not belong to you, and they can make decisions that will cost them their life.

[51:18] Tonya Pinkins: And you would do anything to keep that from happening, but ultimately it's just not in your hand.

[51:22] Taylor Mac: And that's every mother every day. But when you set it in a war, the stakes become really high.

[51:28] Tonya Pinkins: And I feel like nobody deals with that.

[51:30] Taylor Mac: Nobody deals with it.

[51:31] Tonya Pinkins: This is about children trying to individuate and a mother going, No, there's a fucking war, you can die.

[51:37] Taylor Mac: Which is what we are also dealing with every day in the world as mothers, you know.

[51:41] Tonya Pinkins: And nobody plays the play for that.

[51:43] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[51:44] Tonya Pinkins: This relationship that every single one of us actually goes through, period.

[51:48] Taylor Mac: Every human being has to go through that relationship, unless you're orphaned very early.

[51:52] Tonya Pinkins: And then you're going through it with somebody who stepped in and was that for you.

[51:55] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[51:55] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, well, I want to see it.

[51:58] Taylor Mac: I hope you guys finish it.

[51:59] Tonya Pinkins: If we make it, I hope you do.

[52:02] Taylor Mac: If we make it.

[52:05] Tonya Pinkins: This is Tonya Pinkins. Thank you for listening to part one of my interview with Taylor Mac. Part two is coming up next.