This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back for part two of my conversation with Taylor Mac.

[0:04] Tonya Pinkins: I'm Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast, You Can't SAY THAT.

[0:09] Tonya Pinkins: It's the podcast where you came on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:12] Tonya Pinkins: If you're enjoying the conversation, visit me at VPN forward slash you can't say that for more interesting conversations with my peers.

[0:24] Taylor Mac: You've done a lot of Brecht.

[0:25] Taylor Mac: No, just The Good Person of Szechwan.

[0:29] Taylor Mac: I was just acting in it. I didn't do the translation. Um, but I like just acting sometimes; it's really nice.

[0:38] Taylor Mac: It's so easy. It's so much less work than producing, directing, acting, writing, you know. Like that's what I usually do. And everyone always says, "Oh no, you shouldn't act in your own work," or "You shouldn't write and act at the same time." You know, let someone else do that so you can be an outside eye. And I'd say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." That's bullshit. Like just, you know, do your work and work how hard you want to work and figure it out, and everyone adapts to the new techniques that need to be used, and it's fine. It always works out.

[1:15] Taylor Mac: But, uh, every so often I just like to focus on one thing.

[1:20] Tonya Pinkins: See, we're at the opposite ends of that pendulum.

[1:23] Taylor Mac: Oh, really?

[1:23] Tonya Pinkins: Like you, I look at you and I think, I don't know how anybody could do a 24-hour musical. I saw 12 hours of it, and I was just like, "You could do it." I don't even want to do a solo show, okay? I'm like, that you have the voice is hard.

[1:36] Taylor Mac: But at the same time, as an actor, it's no longer enough. Like it's just too easy. I can do most of the things people offer me in my sleep.

[1:46] Taylor Mac: Oh, yeah. Why should I get out of bed and go spend six hours a day? Like I can do this today.

[1:52] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[1:52] Taylor Mac: You know, but for you, you need a break from the fact that you're firing on all cylinders all the time. For me, I'm looking for moments where I can fire on all cylinders.

[2:01] Tonya Pinkins: Uh-huh.

[2:02] Taylor Mac: Yeah. You know, well, that was a decision I made early on, is that I wasn't—I have such respect for actors that just commit to the material. Don't judge it, don't judge the character. They just are full on in it, and they do that thing. I knew I was never gonna be that actor. I always want to work with actors like that, but I knew I was never gonna be that actor. I couldn't just get up and do something that I didn't politically agree with or socially agree with. And so I have things to say. So I knew I had to make some kind of hybrid work for myself because I wasn't gonna be happy doing under fives on Law and Order. I just wasn't gonna be happy convincing the world that every defendant is guilty. Just couldn't do it.

[2:58] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[2:58] Taylor Mac: So, and most of the people I know who have those kind of careers, they're not happy. So, uh, then they're extraordinary actors who are just, you know, so anyways, I try to encourage people who have some kind of drive to make their own work. I don't know. It's, yeah, it's you should make your own work. I want to see your work.

[3:18] Tonya Pinkins: I don't kind of sort of try sometimes.

[3:23] Taylor Mac: Like I was interviewing Bridget Everett the other day.

[3:25] Taylor Mac: Yeah, she was in my first musical that I wrote. She changed my life. Like that was doing our hit parade was life-altering for me.

[3:36] Tonya Pinkins: Oh wow.

[3:36] Taylor Mac: I told her that I saw her perform once and she ended a song by sitting on a patron's face.

[3:42] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[3:43] Taylor Mac: And it fucked with me in such a way that I left the theater. I didn't say goodbye. I just fled home. I didn't know what it had done to me. I had no words for the experience. It just fucked with me. And when I ran into her many months later and she asked me to come on stage with her, I was like, I need to see what you do. And then when I saw our hit parade, I was blown away. And she was like, "You don't have to do all that. You can just sing a song." I was like, "Oh no. If I'm coming here, I want to meet with these people to figure this out."

[4:17] Taylor Mac: And yeah. And I ended up doing "Blow Me One Last Kiss." Brian Nash arranged it. We made it this whole Catholicism thing, and I was raised Catholic. So it was this confrontation of Catholicism. I was in a nun's habit. I had the cat of nine tails; I was beating myself for saying these swear words. We went into this exorcist thing, and then, you know, it ended and I had like a dildo underneath my habit. And leading up to it, I cried and cried. I expected God to strike me down dead or to strike my children down dead. I thought that I would be punished for this sacrilegious event. And, you know, my friend was like, "Why are you doing this thing? You're so upset about it. Why would you do something?"

I said, "Because it's so fucking scary to me that I can't live with this fear. This fear is crippling me." And so I went and did it. It went by so fast. And then I waited to die. And I didn't. I was like, "Oh shit, there's a whole—it was like it suddenly opened a whole door that I didn't know was closed until I did the thing that I would never do."

[5:21] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah.

[5:22] Taylor Mac: When I was first doing my performance art, and it was the scariest thing ever to stand up there wearing like newspapers that I'd glued to my half-naked body and singing these original songs and dealing with the audience and the improv of that and not being an improv artist, having no craft of it, and going in and just trying to be brave and doing something outside of what I was trained to do, which is this very traditional neoliberal theater, you know. And I just, I'll never go back really. I mean, I'll dabble, yeah. I'll dabble in the neoliberal. I mean, it's fun, you know, I enjoy it, but I just never go back. It's so liberating. And, but it's so scary that first time is scary.

[6:13] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, I hope you'll do more. It sounds wonderful.

[6:15] Taylor Mac: Well, it excites me. I mean, like it's what it for the feeling of it for me was kind of in a drone. I like I only want to do things that scare me that much.

[6:22] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, so would you do a whole—would you think to do a whole thing at Joe's Pub or someplace like that?

[6:27] Taylor Mac: I've done like 15 night callbacks, uh-huh. And they know about wild and crazy stuff. Like I write them and they're crazy, and you know, I have guys dressed up in heels singing. I bring a Sybian on stage and have people on it. I mean, I've done some crazy stuff. I think the thing that deterred me from that is doing it all by myself and not having any producer, and that when they call me and go, "There's like two seats sold," you're like, "Oh god, I gotta try to get people in." I was like, that part did not interest me.

[6:53] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[6:54] Taylor Mac: Well, that's you gotta be a self—

[6:56] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[6:57] Taylor Mac: I don't know how you do that. How do you do that? What is that self-promotion thing? I do not understand the self-promotion.

[7:02] Taylor Mac: Well, you know this wonderful Christy Edmonds who's, um, she runs the UCLA Performing Center of the Art of Performance in Los Angeles, and she's extraordinary, and she booked me, and it's a Royce Hall; it's a big theater out there. And I'd never performed in LA before, and so I said, "You know, this theater is too big for me for my first time." And she said, "Taylor, if we rely on the artists to get the audience, we're not doing our job." And it was the first time anyone had ever said that to me in the presenting world. I'd always carried this burden of it's my responsibility to bring in the audience. And what she was saying is, "No, no, that's our job. Your job is to make the art." And it was so liberating to me because now I don't really worry about it. It is the theater's job. That's why they get paid salaries. We don't get paid salaries unless we're like working eight years a week. We don't get paid a salary, so it's their job to do that.

[8:19] Taylor Mac: So I would say the activism in that fear of, you know, if only two people bought tickets, that is the pub's problem. That is not your problem. And so then the, you know, the responsibility has to be put on—you have to find the venue who's actually gonna hold their responsibility and live up to it, you know, to get you into that. I loved the performing, but the trying to get an audience and oh, and the posters and the placards and the this and that, and then it's like you still like—but I don't believe that you perform in New York City and only two people showing up.

[8:55] Tonya Pinkins: No, no, no, two is hyperbolic, right?

[8:57] Taylor Mac: But you know, you think the room is only 120 people and I can't sell out 120 people.

[9:02] Tonya Pinkins: Right, I know.

[9:02] Taylor Mac: It's depressing when you can't. And it's so interesting because one year you'll be like, "It's packed. Every show is packed." And then the next year it's like, "Nope." And you have no idea why. You're like, "Oh, because I was in this thing and they're thinking about me." And also New York has so much choice.

[9:18] Tonya Pinkins: So many choices.

[9:19] Taylor Mac: So much choice. Like people could be—and people could just stay home and watch TV really quite.

[9:22] Tonya Pinkins: Well, and it's also about— I mean, it's about getting the—it is about getting the word out. I mean, uh, that the advertising only, you know, at a 180-seat theater or whatever isn't gonna be—there's not gonna be a big budget for it.

[9:38] Taylor Mac: Right.

[9:38] Tonya Pinkins: So, you know, that is tricky. I find that ritual helps. I find when you do ritual, uh, ritual performance in terms of booking one show, um, sometimes will not get you an audience, but booking 30 shows over the course of eight months will get you an audience.

[9:57] Taylor Mac: And what I mean by that is—

[9:57] Tonya Pinkins: But who can book you 30 times if you can't get an audience the first time?

[10:02] Taylor Mac: Well, you get an aud—like it—you basically, this word of mouth is part of that. You know, you start to build this word of mouth. The same show, like Bridget, um, will do the same show for a couple years.

[10:15] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, right, at Joe's Pub night after night after night after night.

[10:19] Taylor Mac: Now she's famous at this point, but she—there was a—she wasn't.

[10:22] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[10:23] Taylor Mac: And when we were doing 24 Decade, we started and I would have, you know, a hundred people in a 180-seat house, and then it got out, and then eventually it was packed every time. So I gotta just keep doing it.

[10:38] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I mean, I think that there's something to the opera.

[10:43] Taylor Mac: Well, the burlesque performers are my friend Dudie Martini. She makes her fan dance, right? She does one number; it's the fan dance. And she was doing it in 1999 or 2000 when I first encountered her. And she's still doing it. And I always felt, "Well, I've sung that song. I wrote that song; I've sung it." And the audience that had—they've seen it, so I can't do that again. And I learned from the burlesque performers, "Nope, just keep doing it. Just keep doing it and doing it." And I've seen over the years how she's built an audience through the repetition. It's just like the freaking politicians who repeat the same slogan time after time. I mean, it is making a commodity out of the performance. So that's, you know, cheap.

[11:31] Taylor Mac: But no, for me, it's like I'm bored. Like I've explored this song 12 times. I don't want to sing it anymore.

[11:43] Tonya Pinkins: Well, but let's—but look in the hype shows a week.

[11:46] Taylor Mac: Yeah, you did it eight times a week for two years.

[11:49] Tonya Pinkins: No, no, no, no, a year. That was the longest I've ever done it.

[11:52] Taylor Mac: But that's a lot of shows.

[11:54] Tonya Pinkins: I know.

[11:55] Taylor Mac: That's like more than a lot of people.

[11:57] Tonya Pinkins: I gotta sing it again.

[11:58] Taylor Mac: I know, but I know, but no wonder you're bored because, you know, but I think that's like a thing that children have, like they want to hear the same story again. You could read it to them five times, and they really like it.

[12:08] Tonya Pinkins: My poor children, their mother would not do that for them.

[12:12] Tonya Pinkins: Their mother was like, "No."

[12:14] Taylor Mac: I think 300 performances is enough. Like you can let it go after that.

[12:19] Tonya Pinkins: But I think people want to see your signature song. Like people are always asking me to sing "Lot's Wife." Like, "Nah, not gonna happen."

[12:26] Taylor Mac: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've moved on.

[12:27] Tonya Pinkins: You've moved on.

[12:30] Taylor Mac: Yeah. I think you should.

[12:32] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. I mean, I loved it, but yeah.

[12:34] Taylor Mac: Yeah. It took a it was like a piece of life.

[12:37] Tonya Pinkins: What do you want to what w if you were to do another musical, what do you want to do?

[12:42] Taylor Mac: Uh people ask you that all the time.

[12:43] Tonya Pinkins: No, people don't ask me that all the time.

[12:46] Taylor Mac: Um I mean, is there anything in the canon that you're you're like, I wanna do that role?

[12:52] Tonya Pinkins: No, because I think in the cabaret I picked all the songs out of the canon and I sang them.

[12:57] Taylor Mac: Yeah. And I think I always picked my work based on who was in the room.

[13:01] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[13:02] Taylor Mac: So I didn't read the material. I would just be like, Oh, they're in the room? Oh, I just wanna be in a room with them.

[13:06] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[13:06] Taylor Mac: So it didn't matter what the material was, or if the material was up to worthy, it was like, well, we're gonna be in the room. We're gonna we're gonna make it better. Like, we're gonna be there.

[13:13] Tonya Pinkins: And I feel like in that ye it was that year of mother courage, there were like three shows that I was in the room with really great people.

[13:24] Taylor Mac: And it was three in a row, which was the three strikes, and I was out where my intelligence and inquisitiveness was not matched in the room.

[13:34] Tonya Pinkins: And was in fact treated like it was a problem.

[13:37] Taylor Mac: Yeah. That I wanted to go deeper, that I wanted to know more, that I wanted to do, and it was like that was a problem.

[13:42] Tonya Pinkins: And I was like, uh uh oh, that's all I do. I I come in the room and I'm like, okay, we figured that out. Now what else? What else? What else?

[13:50] Taylor Mac: It's like George has this thing, he says, brilliance lies in the moment that might not work.

[13:56] Tonya Pinkins: Mm-hmm.

[13:57] Taylor Mac: And and and I'm like, yeah, this thing that has never existed before. And that's where he exists too.

[14:02] Tonya Pinkins: He's, I mean, that's the fun part of George, is that's where he exists, is uh that means the danger of George, but it's also the fun part of it.

[14:09] Taylor Mac: But that's what I and I've worked with him more than anyone in my career. So that's where I live.

[14:12] Tonya Pinkins: I'm like, okay, we we figured out all these things that do work. Now what are we gonna try that might not work?

[14:18] Taylor Mac: That might be some shit that nobody's ever seen before. That's where I wanna be.

[14:22] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[14:23] Taylor Mac: And I just stopped meeting people in the room who were working at that level.

[14:27] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[14:28] Taylor Mac: Well, it would be hard to work to start with.

[14:30] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, not that that you started with him, but your first Broadway musical was with George, right?

[14:34] Taylor Mac: No.

[14:35] Tonya Pinkins: There's a lot of music was Marily We Rolling Long.

[14:37] Taylor Mac: What I think is that.

[14:40] Tonya Pinkins: Well, okay.

[14:41] Taylor Mac: So Sondheim and then George Wood.

[14:43] Tonya Pinkins: So I mean, you know, I mean, it's hard to, those are very smart people.

[14:49] Taylor Mac: It's hard to go from them to somebody who's like, Yeah, it is hard.

[14:54] Tonya Pinkins: I've worked with the you know, the greatest artists of my time.

[14:57] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[14:58] Tonya Pinkins: And I'm accustomed to like being in a room and telling Tony Kushner that doesn't work.

[15:02] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[15:02] Tonya Pinkins: So if Tony Kushner can hear that from me, you new playwright, you can't hear me tell you that doesn't work. You're gonna be mad at me. Come on now.

[15:14] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[15:18] Tonya Pinkins: So well.

[15:21] Taylor Mac: I don't know what to say to that.

[15:23] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but for me, that's the excitement, like that friction of okay, you you and then and then like for me, that's like sex.

[15:30] Taylor Mac: For me, like when we are working creatively at our best, it's the friction of like, well, I like this. And then suddenly combustion happens, and something has come into being from this friction of the two things, and now there's something that didn't exist before.

[15:44] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[15:46] Taylor Mac: And I don't know, like everybody's so cozy and comfy.

[15:53] Tonya Pinkins: I think I might be one of those cozy people you're complaining about.

[15:57] Taylor Mac: There's nothing I've seen you do that was cozy and comfy.

[16:00] Tonya Pinkins: And I and I saw somewhere where you said you build in failure in the work.

[16:04] Taylor Mac: You build in the potential for the free. That's like the baby. Like that I wanted like the potential for the ending of the play, which we're so used to being so perfectly like crafted, and the ending of the play could ruin the entire experience.

[16:19] Tonya Pinkins: But then elevate the experience because the experience is the art that's in the room, not the not your preconceived notion of what you've just experienced.

[16:29] Taylor Mac: So to me, that is the that's exciting, the danger in the room. Can can you give over the dramatic event, the moment when everything changes.

[16:40] Tonya Pinkins: Can you give that res that over to the audience and how they respond each night differently?

[16:47] Taylor Mac: That to me is thrilling and um it it it takes us away from epiphany.

[16:54] Tonya Pinkins: It it and it brings back the liveness of theater instead of one of the reasons you get tired of singing the the song every single night is because of the the concept of that weird thing that happens on Broadway or even in um regional theater, uh where they freeze the show.

[17:13] Taylor Mac: I don't that's why Bridget's so exciting. You know, when you go and say you saw our hit parade, everything was alive in the moment everything could be different.

[17:21] Tonya Pinkins: It cause there's no freezing the show.

[17:25] Taylor Mac: And that I I it just is my least favorite thing to hear is the show frozen.

[17:32] Tonya Pinkins: I'm always like, fuck you. Like, no.

[17:34] Taylor Mac: Right.

[17:35] Tonya Pinkins: It's alive. We're and I'm trying to make moments that are alive for the audience so that they can feel alive in their considerations.

[17:43] Taylor Mac: That's what made Whitney Houston exciting. You go here sing the same song. It was not ever gonna be the way it was on the record.

[17:48] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[17:49] Taylor Mac: She was gonna do some new stuff, and you were there to be in her exploring it in a new way every night.

[17:56] Tonya Pinkins: And when I did Caroline in London, Matt Lowe, the music director, said to me, It's just so fascinating to me how you do a different show every night.

[18:02] Taylor Mac: The lines are the same and the music is the same and the blocking's the same, but you do a different performance every night.

[18:07] Tonya Pinkins: I can't have that.

[18:09] Taylor Mac: He said, I've got to put together 12 companies and they've got to be the same.

[18:12] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, I said, So you were like responsible for the standardization of musical theater into McDonald's and Starbucks because I'm like musical theater is one offs.

[18:22] Taylor Mac: Ethel Merman, these people who were just iconic, there isn't another one.

[18:25] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[18:26] Taylor Mac: That's what musical theater is.

[18:27] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, and I don't have to change the lines, the blocking or the words to to actually let you experience the life of it in a different way every night.

[18:36] Taylor Mac: And we've sort of suddenly moved away from that.

[18:38] Tonya Pinkins: And that's from a music director who runs a lot of big shows all over the world.

[18:41] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[18:42] Tonya Pinkins: That that that is seen as uh a threat to commerce.

[18:45] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[18:46] Tonya Pinkins: Because people want to know that if their friends told them about it in New York, that when they go to see it in London, it's gonna be the same show.

[18:52] Taylor Mac: They saw that exact same thing.

[18:53] Tonya Pinkins: It's like eating at McDonald's in Rome.

[18:56] Taylor Mac: Oh my god, like who wants that?

[18:58] Tonya Pinkins: A lot of people.

[19:00] Taylor Mac: I know.

[19:00] Tonya Pinkins: You know, but so Dan Fish said to me the most wonderful thing uh was so he does this Oklahoma, and and uh and the people that love it love it, and the people that hate it are mad that it's not Oklahoma, their version of Oklahoma, right?

[19:15] Taylor Mac: And he says, I always thought the point of theater was that the curtain goes up and you don't know what's on the other side.

[19:24] Tonya Pinkins: But people come to the theater because they want to know what's on the other side.

[19:28] Taylor Mac: Even that the marketing for uh Nathan would always talk about this.

[19:32] Tonya Pinkins: The marketing for Mamma Mia, their poster said, You already know you love it.

[19:38] Taylor Mac: Which is like already knowing that.

[19:40] Tonya Pinkins: That is evil to me.

[19:41] Taylor Mac: I mean, I I get that some people like that, but for me, it's just that's uh no, you shouldn't already know if you love it.

[19:49] Tonya Pinkins: You it the it shouldn't be uh I don't I I well can it where's the surprise?

[19:55] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I guess a lot of people don't want surprise.

[19:57] Tonya Pinkins: They don't.

[19:58] Taylor Mac: They want to know what they they want what they know, and and that's not what I'm that's not my genre.

[20:04] Tonya Pinkins: And it's not what the arts to me, the arts is not that's not our purpose.

[20:10] Taylor Mac: We rev up our society.

[20:12] Tonya Pinkins: We point a finger at what the problem is, we show that, and that's why it's so radical, and that's why countries shut down the artists and kill them first.

[20:20] Taylor Mac: Well, we're I mean people have done uh yeah, I mean it's the difference between something that's artistic and something that's art, right?

[20:26] Tonya Pinkins: So like everything that's on Broadway is artistic.

[20:29] Taylor Mac: Everything, even the most commodified piece of Disney or whatever is artistic, but it's not art.

[20:37] Tonya Pinkins: And the difference, you know, is art is dangerous.

[20:37] Taylor Mac: Art is dangerous.

[20:42] Tonya Pinkins: Artists gonna break up the status quo, not support it.

[20:45] Taylor Mac: Right.

[20:46] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, and the the early theater, it all came from.

[20:50] Taylor Mac: I mean, the Sanskrit plays and and uh and the Greeks.

[20:54] Tonya Pinkins: They were all about uh um choring up the status quo, making sure everybody adheres to um the kind of social dictate and and uh and honors the king and the queen and the emperor and the and the church and the you know all of that uh and the rules and stuff.

[21:11] Taylor Mac: So they were tea they were all kind of about teaching people how to behave in the world.

[21:16] Tonya Pinkins: Um and uh so it's it's rooted in us, and but part of our job is to break free of that because the the that's just artistic, that's not art.

[21:28] Taylor Mac: That's propaganda, actually.

[21:30] Tonya Pinkins: It is propaganda, and so much of our movies and our television is propaganda.

[21:33] Taylor Mac: Yeah, and it's great propaganda, and it is beautiful propaganda.

[21:37] Tonya Pinkins: I love it.

[21:38] Taylor Mac: Like for me, I've been loving Korean drama.

[21:41] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, you watch any Korean drama?

[21:43] Taylor Mac: No, but I I saw that parasite movie.

[21:45] Tonya Pinkins: It's wonderful.

[21:47] Taylor Mac: Oh, it's so good. What I love about the Koreans is that they they don't they don't follow Aristotle in 3x structure.

[21:54] Tonya Pinkins: Uh-huh.

[21:55] Taylor Mac: And they just mix genres and there are no rules.

[21:58] Tonya Pinkins: And it's just like you're just on a ride and you just go and it works.

[22:01] Taylor Mac: And I mean, that parasite starts as a comedy and then it's a drama, and then it's a tragedy, and then it's a farce, and then it's like fucking an epic Greek tragedy.

[22:10] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, it's everything that I want my theater to be in so in uh uh even even the liveness feels present.

[22:18] Taylor Mac: You're you actually don't know what's gonna happen because he's he's making hybrid work, he's squishing all of those genres and forms and styles all together in the same film.

[22:26] Tonya Pinkins: So you're not sure, you're always surprised by every everything the reaction.

[22:31] Taylor Mac: The you he's he's juggling tropes and at the same time he's breaking them.

[22:36] Tonya Pinkins: It's so beautifully done and agreed, and it's not homogenous, you know.

[22:40] Taylor Mac: You don't feel like you're seeing the same thing you've seen five million times.

[22:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[22:46] Taylor Mac: I'm grateful for you making what you make.

[22:48] Tonya Pinkins: Uh no, I I really, really am because I I also think it it paints this path for other artists to follow in.

[22:56] Taylor Mac: Do you know what I mean?

[22:57] Tonya Pinkins: So it it's interesting to me that you like.

[22:59] Taylor Mac: Do you know Hannah Gadsby too?

[23:01] Tonya Pinkins: Uh Hedda Gap.

[23:03] Taylor Mac: Hannah Gadsby, the Australian.

[23:04] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[23:05] Taylor Mac: Like I'm excited by people like you and Hannah and Bridget, who are making art of your uniqueness, art that nobody else could make it.

[23:15] Tonya Pinkins: Like it is the expression of you in the world.

[23:21] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I don't uh uh uh yeah I don't I don't know what to say to that, but uh uh I I guess I'm trying I'm I maybe I'm a little insecure about uh about that because I feel uh that um identity is the is subplot, but when it's plot um it's uh less interesting.

[23:54] Tonya Pinkins: How do you mean what do you mean by identity is plot?

[23:56] Taylor Mac: No, I want to know.

[23:57] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I guess I mean that um uh 24 decade history of popular music is uh people often say it's a queer retelling of American history.

[24:08] Taylor Mac: And I think, no, no, no, no.

[24:10] Tonya Pinkins: Um the queer aspect of it is the subplot is essentially like everything because I'm queer and I'm on stage and I'm telling it, the history is queer, right?

[24:21] Taylor Mac: Okay, because it's coming from a queer body, the history is queer.

[24:26] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[24:27] Taylor Mac: Uh and and and that's important.

[24:30] Tonya Pinkins: And I I wanted to be there.

[24:32] Taylor Mac: Uh it's who I am.

[24:34] Tonya Pinkins: But the the the show itself is about how communities are built because they're uh because and um while they're being torn apart.

[24:43] Taylor Mac: How what it is uh the questions that um emerge as a result of that phenomenon of communities being built because they're torn apart.

[24:50] Tonya Pinkins: And um queerness and queer communities are certainly an aspect of that uh history.

[24:57] Taylor Mac: Wow.

[24:58] Tonya Pinkins: Somebody's somebody's excited.

[25:01] Taylor Mac: I don't know what it is.

[25:02] Tonya Pinkins: Somebody's screaming it's for somebody down there.

[25:05] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[25:06] Tonya Pinkins: Um I don't think of your work as queer.

[25:08] Tonya Pinkins: So when I think I'm going to see Taylor Mac, I'm not saying, oh, I'm going to see this queer artist. I'm like, I'm going to see a Taylor Mac. And whatever point of view is gonna come out, it's gonna be something that is uniquely how Taylor experiences and reprocesses the world and gives it back to us. Uh you know, when I think of Bridget, I just am going to see Bridget Ervard, and she's gonna do some shit that only Bridget experiences same with Hannah Gazby. I mean, you know, Hannah just discovered she was autistic, so it's like I don't think I'm going to see this autistic person. No, it's I for me, it's that this could only come from this. This mark the Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille quote, like if you don't express it, it will not exist anywhere else in the world, and that that's your obligation.

[25:54] Taylor Mac: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[25:55] Tonya Pinkins: So for me, it's like, okay, well, you I mean, like you might not be queer in a few years. I don't know. I mean, like I don't I'm not trying to examine your identity, yeah. Yeah, I'm interested in what's coming through you and however that evolves over the course of your life, I'm interested because it's exciting and engaging and entertaining as well. So I'm on the journey with you, however, you evolve through your life.

[26:17] Taylor Mac: Yeah. Well, and I th but I think the maybe the reason why when you go to see me, you don't think I'm going to see this queer performer is because uh the queerness is the reference for contextualization, but it's not the point.

[26:30] Tonya Pinkins: Right. Right, right, right, right.

[26:32] Taylor Mac: So it's maybe how things are uh interpreted, but it's not it's it's not the point of the work.

[26:39] Tonya Pinkins: So um it's not not the point. It's it's it's subtext of the work, you know. So I guess that's that's really what I mean. I I guess I'm really where the insecurity comes from is how does the individual uh um escape ego and still make work.

[27:01] Taylor Mac: That's really my question, you know.

[27:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, and ego is a big part of work.

[27:05] Taylor Mac: Yeah. Like I feel like when I and I do make work, I just made my first feature film.

[27:10] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, you can't.

[27:11] Taylor Mac: I wrote it, produced it, directed, started in social political horror.

[27:15] Tonya Pinkins: And you like horror movies.

[27:17] Taylor Mac: I love horror movies.

[27:19] Tonya Pinkins: Um, and I think the ego place in it is like, you know, there would be points when pe when you know my team would be like, Well, this is what's on the page, and I'm like, uh-huh. And this is what we're gonna do right now. Because I'm seeing and I realize like there's things that they're reading on the page in a linear way, and I know what that means, and I I can't I don't have time to explain to you because right now I gotta make something right right here because I can see it.

[27:43] Taylor Mac: You want people who will just commit.

[27:44] Tonya Pinkins: Right, because people just commit. I can't I can't explain it to you. You never can't I don't have time. I I can be done with it before I try to explain to you why it's not doesn't look like what you see on the page or what you understand what it's on the page to be. Nigel Smith was is directing my new play, uh that's gonna be at the fleet, and he he was saying to the actors, I I just I just want you all to commit to every moment, whatever it might be. Like that's all you need to do. You don't need to wonder if what the psychology is behind it, just commit.

[28:13] Taylor Mac: Like And that was for that was for that was for young performers.

[28:17] Tonya Pinkins: See, I'm the teacher who tells my young performers, no, you got to understand everything. You are the material, you are the actor, they're coming to see you. You know, because I'm I'm upset with that. I go to actors and I go, so what was it like being in the room? Like, what was the conversation? What are you making? They'll be like, mm-hmm.

[28:34] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[28:34] Tonya Pinkins: They just showing up to be paper dolls. And I I'm I'm I can't be a paper doll.

[28:38] Taylor Mac: I know it goes back to our thing.

[28:41] Tonya Pinkins: Just do that job. I want to understand because my mind is going to be working.

[28:45] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[28:45] Tonya Pinkins: So you know, the more that you make your own thing, the more uh at least.

[28:50] Taylor Mac: The more it's a relief to be a paper doll.

[28:52] Tonya Pinkins: It is a relief to be a paper doll.

[28:55] Taylor Mac: You just show up and do the thing and have some fun.

[28:57] Tonya Pinkins: I've I've just been get offered this role on Broadway, which you know, if it works out with a schedule, I'm gonna do. Uh and and uh I I just was that part of me was like, okay, well, I I gotta engage, and of course they they've asked me to be in it so that I will engage mentally and stuff. And there's this other part of me that was just like, or I could just play the part.

[29:18] Taylor Mac: Yeah, I could just, oh, how much fun would that be?

[29:21] Tonya Pinkins: Just show up and play the part for I get that.

[29:25] Taylor Mac: I totally get that, and I've tried it. Like, I think my my attitude about doing television was like, hey, I am material, I mean I am totally a paper doll in television because I don't know how the director's gonna edit it, I don't know what the vision is. There's a whole bunch of people who are in control, and I don't know.

[29:39] Tonya Pinkins: So I just show up to be the material that they're gonna use.

[29:43] Taylor Mac: And then I got sort of wrestled into doing this nothing part.

[29:51] Tonya Pinkins: Where literally they they asked me to come in and um they said we just need her strength in the room. It's kind of just to be an extra. And I was like, there's a lot of money to be an extra. An extra? Sure. I came in one time.

[30:03] Taylor Mac: That one time.

[30:04] Tonya Pinkins: Then it became two times. Then it became I was the titular character on the show, but I was just sitting there in the background.

[30:15] Taylor Mac: And literally an extra, and I might have one line.

[30:18] Tonya Pinkins: And so, you know, and then it would be like, Can could you just do less? Could you just do less? I'm like, no, I can't be invisible.

[30:25] Taylor Mac: Okay.

[30:25] Tonya Pinkins: I'm not able to be invisible. I don't even speak in the scene. I didn't become a performer, so I could be invisible. You know, but it was it it started to be a kind of grating thing for me because like I don't even do anything in the in the thing.

[30:38] Taylor Mac: And I had a director, it was actually a very kind thing.

[30:42] Tonya Pinkins: She said to me, she said, you know, Tanya, I'm sorry I keep asking you to do less. She said, You're just so commanding on screen that I can't take my eyes off you.

[30:49] Taylor Mac: And it's just not your movie.

[30:51] Tonya Pinkins: Well, yeah, fair enough.

[30:54] Taylor Mac: Fair enough.

[30:55] Tonya Pinkins: But you know, I always think like if you get cast to play Scout or whatever that name, that character's name that plays the wall in Midsummer's Night Dream, and somebody asks you, What's the play about? Well, it's about this guy who plays a wall. That's what it is to be an artist.

[31:10] Taylor Mac: That's what Bill Esper used to say.

[31:11] Tonya Pinkins: He said, You know an actor when you go, so what's the play about? Well, it's about this wall.

[31:18] Taylor Mac: Exactly.

[31:19] Tonya Pinkins: That is what it is to be. Because that's the well, that's the actor's job, the director's job, and the playwright's job is to think about the themes and the ideas. And sure, the actor needs to think about the themes and ideas of the big play as a wall, but it's still about the wall.

[31:37] Taylor Mac: That's your entry point is you the wall.

[31:39] Tonya Pinkins: And my to me, my gift as an actor is I have always had the view of the director.

[31:46] Taylor Mac: I didn't know that until now.

[31:49] Tonya Pinkins: So I've never been one of those actors who could just go in and just try to make it about me and make me, me, me, me. I always wanted to serve the vision of the playwright and the director.

[32:01] Taylor Mac: So I wanted to understand what is the big thing we're building.

[32:04] Tonya Pinkins: And then I'm gonna craft my thing so that each piece of it is leading to the thing you're trying to make.

[32:12] Taylor Mac: Because I'm I'm seeing that.

[32:13] Tonya Pinkins: That that is my way in is understanding that, oh, we get to hear. So, you know, here's the moment where I need to be hated, and then here's the moment where I win you back, and because I do think of myself as a craftsperson.

[32:26] Taylor Mac: So yes, I'm from my point of view, but I also see that I fit into something bigger.

[32:34] Tonya Pinkins: Uh-huh.

[32:35] Taylor Mac: And I actually feel like I have the control and the craft to be able to plot the points that are building this thing that you you are building, even when you don't know it, because my being inside of it and knowing it, I just do know those things.

[32:48] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah.

[32:50] Taylor Mac: I mean, that's uh I I I long for both, you know, whenever I'm working with actors, I long for the actor who's gonna make five million choices and come at it from the perspective that they're the lead, even if they're the smallest part.

[33:02] Tonya Pinkins: And I long for the person who understands uh that they're not the lead, even if they are the lead, that the play is the lead, that the ideas are the lead, that the that what we're trying to all collectively do together is bigger than us as individuals.

[33:19] Taylor Mac: So, you know, you want you want to like juggle both of those things, and yeah.

[33:24] Tonya Pinkins: That's that's the dream collaborative.

[33:25] Taylor Mac: You need you need all of that in the room.

[33:27] Tonya Pinkins: Like George says, the best ensemble is a group of stars.

[33:32] Taylor Mac: He says, because you want the audience to be able to look anywhere in the on the stage at any moment in time and see something exciting.

[33:40] Tonya Pinkins: And he says, if you have a bunch of stars on stage, everybody knows if you don't take the moment, I will.

[33:47] Taylor Mac: So you know, everybody is just stepping up, stepping up, stepping up.

[33:51] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[33:52] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[33:53] Tonya Pinkins: I don't that's not that's not how I would want to work.

[33:56] Taylor Mac: Because tell us why.

[33:58] Tonya Pinkins: Tell me why.

[33:59] Taylor Mac: Um because maybe star means something to you than it means to me though.

[34:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[34:03] Taylor Mac: So star to me doesn't have to do with your name or your fame. To me, star is that everybody is like at the top of their game.

[34:13] Tonya Pinkins: Nobody may think of them as a star, but the quality of their work is like they can come the c they have the ability to say, How d I dare you to turn away from me.

[34:22] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[34:22] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, I'm I I love it.

[34:24] Taylor Mac: I love being challenged in the room.

[34:25] Tonya Pinkins: I but you know what I'm what I'm more interested in is being inspired.

[34:30] Taylor Mac: And what inspires?

[34:31] Tonya Pinkins: So something like Tigger, uh, who's a burles boy less performer, one of the first boy less performers in this neo the first boy less performer in the neo burlesque movement.

[34:41] Taylor Mac: Um, he helped create boylesque.

[34:43] Tonya Pinkins: He's extraordinary. And he uh he's a muse of mine, and I I I cast him in almost everything I do.

[34:50] Taylor Mac: And uh and I f like Tiger doesn't challenge me like he'll take a moment, you know.

[34:57] Tonya Pinkins: He'll if if he comes on stage, you know he's gonna make a choice.

[35:00] Taylor Mac: The all eyes are gonna be on him when he walks in.

[35:03] Tonya Pinkins: Uh he's going to fill every moment, and every moment is gonna be full until he leaves the stage.

[35:09] Taylor Mac: And I don't feel um threatened by that.

[35:13] Tonya Pinkins: I I feel inspired to step up, but I also feel inspired to make space for that, right?

[35:22] Taylor Mac: So um what happens is he'll walk on stage and I'll be singing a song, and then I want to.

[35:28] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, somebody made a choice. Let me give them space.

[35:30] Taylor Mac: Hello, yes, parade. Do your thing, do your thing, do your thing.

[35:35] Tonya Pinkins: And now it's my turn again, you know.

[35:37] Taylor Mac: Like, so I I guess I feel um it's just a it's more of a semantics, and more of the framework.

[35:49] Tonya Pinkins: And all of a sudden I was like, what's going on? What's going on here?

[35:53] Taylor Mac: And I turned around, and I was like, what are you all doing back here?

[35:57] Tonya Pinkins: And this woman, one of the actors said, Oh, I was trying to uh give you your moment. I was trying to like do nothing. So to give you, and I was like, honey, first of all, I don't need you to give me a moment.

[36:12] Taylor Mac: I can take the moment.

[36:13] Tonya Pinkins: I can take the moment, and if I can't take it, then please take it. But don't try to be nothing, because I could feel the vacuousness, you know what I mean?

[36:16] Taylor Mac: I could feel the lack of what was going on in her trying to give me something, she actually distracted me from the fact that there was nothing happening here that was weird, yeah.

[36:33] Tonya Pinkins: You know, yeah, and it was just uh I don't I don't know actually what she was doing, but I knew that it it was calling my attention, even though she was behind me.

[36:42] Taylor Mac: That's so strange.

[36:43] Tonya Pinkins: That is a weird thing.

[36:45] Taylor Mac: It is a weird thing, yeah.

[36:47] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I don't know.

[36:48] Taylor Mac: Oh I just always find that when you make space for other people, you end up making space for yourself ultimately as well.

[36:56] Tonya Pinkins: So I I kind of um I that's just my philosophy.

[37:00] Taylor Mac: I just don't like that.

[37:01] Tonya Pinkins: I I I don't really like to frame it like a competition, you know.

[37:05] Taylor Mac: I don't think of it as a competition.

[37:07] Tonya Pinkins: But I think when I'm working with someone who is good or better than me, I don't have to do any work.

[37:14] Taylor Mac: I literally just get on stage and I just pay attention to them and respond.

[37:19] Tonya Pinkins: And it is like sex.

[37:20] Taylor Mac: It's like if someone's good, you just pay attention and you just respond to that, and it's just like this amazing thing.

[37:27] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[37:27] Taylor Mac: I because I was I was definitely trained, and I and I love this philosophy.

[37:31] Tonya Pinkins: The the other person on the stage, and I think of this as the audience sometimes too, is your life jacket.

[37:41] Taylor Mac: Um, and there's no way to make the art without the other person. So everything has to come from the other person. It's very Meisner, you know.

[37:51] Tonya Pinkins: It is.

[37:51] Taylor Mac: I was trained Meisner too. Yeah, yeah. Everything has to come from the other. Everything's the other person, and the better they are, the better you are. The better you are. You know, yeah. I mean, that's yeah, that is my and and and I mean, it could be a semantics miscommunication about generosity, but that's what I think of generosity as somebody like who's able to play that tennis with you, you know. Um that the tennis isn't about who gets to win the game, but who get when you get in them in that moment of of uh or hitting the ball back and forth, it's so exciting. It's like sex, sex, it is like sex. I've experienced it maybe four times in my life. The last one was with Diane Weist.

[38:30] Tonya Pinkins: Really?

[38:32] Taylor Mac: Oh, she's so wonderful. I don't think she even knows how wonderful she is. Like, she's one of those people who just like opens up a channel and lets some shit come through her. And she's a masterclass. So sometimes I would just have to just be marveling. You know what I mean? And I I I she's such a private person. Like, I don't know what she thinks of me as a human being or anything like that. But to work with her, I learned so much, and I could tell that she respected me enough that she would start playing with me. And she'd be like, oh, come on, do this. Okay, well, I'm gonna do that. And then we would start like, you know, and then sometimes we would just crack each other up in the middle of the stage because we had reached this point where we were just we were just playing with our craft, yeah with each other, you know. And I was like, wow.

[39:18] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[39:18] Taylor Mac: When Julie White came on board with Gary, who's I mean, I just I'm so friggin' in love with her. She's master. She is master. And and she's just uh she would she would do that sometimes too, where I I you know, she had to learn her part in four days and stuff, so she attached to any anything that she could in order to make it happen. And you could see that one of her goals was to make Nathan Lane laugh, and it was so alive to me. I mean, I think it annoyed George, but you know, because he wanted them to be in the play and all this. But for me, I I just felt like, well, that is the play, that is the spirit of the play to a degree, is um that you're both you're marveling at this incredible character at the same time, you're marveling at the person who is playing the character.

That duality is fascinating to me. And that what always made it work for me, it was action. She was she was doing something. She wasn't just like making a joke. Uh she was trying to do something to the other person on the stage, and that person, she relied on that person, and if they broke, ha ha ha ha. Then she's alive. You know, then she's in the character. That and you would see the whole room transform when that happened, partially because they thought they were getting something original because, and they were because they did it in a different spot every night, but it was a trope. They would always do it. Right. You know, it was it it was interesting to see to see them play and to see him try to resist, and then to see Christine, you know, her character really is trying to resist, and to see her ever so often, one one night in particular, she just couldn't, she couldn't hold it.

I just loved it. I just I just think it's uh there's a preciousness about um realism that always makes me feel like it's sitting on me, you know. I'm like, just let it go, just let it go. We're all in the theater. We know we're in the theater. I know we're making magic, and we will, but you can you can make magic one second and everyone believes it and break the magic, and it's a different kind of magic the next second, and then you can go back to making the magic without everyone believes the illusion in the next second. That's real craft to be able to pop back and forth those two worlds and just commit. I just that to me is uh it's heaven at when I'm sitting in a theater. It's why I prefer musicals because in the musicals they pop from different worlds non-stop. Sometimes you sing it, sometimes you talk it, sometimes you're dancing, sometimes you know, and you know, anyways.

[41:59] Tonya Pinkins: Well, the last thing I'm gonna ask you about is um because I could talk to you forever. You say something on your in the 12-hour or the 24-hour music, but the 12-hour musical, you said it's okay for you to hate me, it's okay for you to be uncomfortable, to be aggravated to want to leave, no matter what in performance art, you can't fail.

[42:17] Taylor Mac: Right.

[42:17] Tonya Pinkins: And you said that there's this wonderful way in which you always um make your performances to design a little bit of failure because that's the way in which you um you know allow people to see your humanity.

[42:33] Taylor Mac: Uh yeah, I I think there's uh um a great deal to be said for and championed uh in terms of um I frame it like reaching for the hem of God, uh using your virtuosity, reaching for virtuosity and practicing and practicing and practicing and doing the thing that you're very good at and and um reaching the hem of God is like yes, I'm I'm almost I'm almost to um to God status because I'm I I'm not almost not human anymore. Um because I'm so good, you know. So there's something to be said for that, that is the goal, right? Um we're going to lift ourselves up towards perfection. But there's something also that is um undermined in the culture a lot, which uh uh which Nina Simone had, which is that you are vulnerable enough to expose your humanity and and to try to reach the people, uh you have to expose your humanity.

Uh so we're not reaching for this thing above us, but we're actually trying to reach each other. And you you have to say, uh, I'm broken. Um, and here's my broken part. And what can we do with this broken part? Can we transform it? Um, do you have this broken part as well? Uh and so that's something I'm always trying to ask myself in every piece. Uh uh Dorothy Allison framed it a different way to her to her writing students. She would say, Write the one thing about yourself that you don't want anyone to know. And then they would do that on a piece of paper in their secret little corner, and then she would say, That's the opening line of your new book. Right. So you're risking, and I and I work that way a lot of the times.

I'll say, I'm gonna risk this thing. I don't want anyone to know about me. I'm gonna put that on stage first. That is going to be what the piece is about. And then you find your way to healing, but you also find your way to um to sharing your humanity with uh I don't know, that there's reaching the people is um just as important as inspiring the people to something greater. I think I was raised in such a way where any mistake or error was punished so severely that um I my survival depended upon uh competence.

[45:19] Taylor Mac: Competence. Competence, yeah, and knowing what I was doing, or at least doing whatever I was doing as if I knew it. Yeah. And I wasn't fully aware of that until I started taking clown work. And um, you know, watching how the funny moment is the moment when the clown is like doesn't know what's gonna happen, doesn't it? And seeing how I had developed a lifelong habit of covering that so quickly that you you never did that moment of the the funny would not be there because I could fill that up quick. And having to relax into allowing myself to be in not knowing out of the survival habit, you know what I mean? Because that's was where the funny is, and you know, it and it's a place that I just continue to try to work into, you know. But the habit is very strong.

[46:16] Tonya Pinkins: What if what are the comedies that you've done?

[46:18] Taylor Mac: Done a lot of comedies.

[46:20] Tonya Pinkins: No, I haven't done a lot of comedies. I had a teacher who told me I wasn't funny, so um I didn't, you know, I believe that story for a long time. Uh well, certainly. Rashida speaking, um uh play on on Broadway. Those are probably really the only two times I've gotten to do anything comedic. And when I was a young, I got to do stuff that was always about being the naive comedy person. I like to write comedy.

[46:49] Tonya Pinkins: Was it fun for you to do those?

[46:51] Taylor Mac: Oh, I loved it. I love fun. Making people laugh. And I love to I love for people to make fun of me. Uh-huh. Like I love it. I think it's great when someone is like imitating me and making fun of me. I love to laugh at myself. Um yeah, and I think more of the things that I do and and and write it even though they're dark, uh it's what's that that apocryphal line. I think they they attribute it to either Wild or Molière, or maybe to both, but it's like if you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh, or else they'll kill you.

[47:24] Taylor Mac: Well that and the de Buffons, which I find so fascinating. Their whole uh their whole technique is they want to make the audience laugh so hard they die. Because they've been kicked out of the culture, and they find their way into the culture to perform for the court, and their whole goal is revolution by making the audience laugh so hard they die.

[47:47] Tonya Pinkins: And what is this? How can I find this? I want to know about this.

[47:49] Taylor Mac: I want to know about The De Buffons.

[47:50] Tonya Pinkins: The Buffons is it the is it a play?

[47:52] Taylor Mac: No, no, no. It's just a it's just an old um comedy, it's one of the comedy uh characters, you know. It's it's like the fool, the clown, the buffon, the mime, the you know, and uh and the buffons that they have a particular thing, they were the grotesque, who were not allowed in because they were deformed and they were gross. But every once a year that during the festival time they let the buffons in to perform for the people, and their revenge on them is we will make them laugh so hard they die. So it's vicious, but it's also wonderful.

[48:23] Tonya Pinkins: I love this. I must explore this.

[48:26] Taylor Mac: You should be a buffon.

[48:28] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god, I love it.

[48:30] Taylor Mac: Look up Red Bastard, he's one of the great buffons, right?

[48:34] Tonya Pinkins: I'm definitely doing that because in my horror movie, you know, one of my delights in writing a horror movie um is that I always have you like, you know, having a really fun time laughing with someone just before a really brutal death.

[48:54] Taylor Mac: Yes, please.

[48:57] Tonya Pinkins: And that's what makes me happy.

[48:59] Taylor Mac: Yeah.

[49:03] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god.

[49:04] Taylor Mac: So wonderful.

[49:07] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[49:08] Taylor Mac: Jex position.

[49:10] Tonya Pinkins: You got you gotta have the tragedy with the comedy to make the comedy even funnier.

[49:14] Taylor Mac: Yes, yes.

[49:16] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, yes, yes.

[49:18] Taylor Mac: You have to have a little tragedy at the end of the comedy in order to see the comedy.

[49:23] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, it looks a lot funnier when you're down there.

[49:29] Taylor Mac: Amazing.

[49:31] Tonya Pinkins: Well, thank you so much for coming and talking to me, Taylor.

[49:37] Taylor Mac: Thank you.

[49:37] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for having me. This is funny. It was good.

[49:39] Taylor Mac: That was great.

[49:40] Tonya Pinkins: I'm glad. This is Tonya Pinkins on You Can't SAY THAT with my guest Taylor Mac on the Broadway Podcast Network. I'm never working again.

[49:54] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT with Tonya Pinkins, part of the Broadway Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Dori Berinstein, edited by Alan Seales, with music by Anthony Norman. You can find more information and other great Broadway related podcasts via BroadwayPodcastNetwork.com slash you can't say that.