Taylor Mac Explores the Philosophy of the Hang – The New York Times

What Sort of A celebration do you throw Everytime you’re about to die? It’s an particularly morbid question These days. However in “The Maintain,” A mannequin new opera from the pertypeer Taylor Mac, The reply includes equal parts philosophy and décor.

The current, written with the composer Matt Ray, is Regarding the demise of Socrates, who after being convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and despatchedenced to demise by hemlock, spent his final hours talking about advantage Collectively with his frifinishs. And a few musics Proper into a current run-by way of of the manufacturing On the Right here Arts Center in dpersonaltpersonal Manhattan, Mac — in a purple tulle robe and appropriately Socratic pandemic beard — started dragging out huge beanbag chairs the placeas a bar took type Inside the nook of the stage.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,” Mac sang, As a Outcome of the eight-piece band leaned Proper into a groove, “I’m in it for the hang.”

That’s one factor of a credo for Mac, whose work, together with the epic “A 24-Decade Historic previous of Properly-appreciated Music,” celebrates group and connection by way of a radical queer lens. And “The Maintain,” created with A pair of of Mac’s longtime collaborators, places these themes onstage as quickly as extra, in a phantasmin the pastrical, exhausting-to-summarize mix.

The current, which runs 105 minutes with out an intermission, takes The type of a gathering of “radical fairies,” who come together Yearly to mourn, and re-enact, the demise of Socrates. There’s An excellent deal of wailing, However in addition queer romps, historic Greek in-jokes, A comic …….

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/theater/taylor-mac-the-hang.html