The Talking Band w/ Taylor Mac - The Walk...

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The Walk Across America for Mother Earth brings together playwright and performer, Taylor Mac, the 2010 OBIE award winner for his acclaimed epic extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge, and the Talking Band, named “one of the most exceptional experimental theater companies in the country” by American Theater Magazine.    Mixing and clashing genres - Commedia Del’Arte, Chekhov, and Beauty Pageant – the show combines Taylor Mac’s exuberant theatricality and the richly scored work of Talking Band to tell the story of The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, a nine-month walk from New York to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. 

Eighteen and eager to flee his suburban conservative upbringing, Taylor joined the Walk in 1992. For nine months this group of political activists, ageing hippies, baby hippies, punks, anarchists, dykes, radical fairies, men, women, senior citizens, and children walked an average of 20 miles a day across the United States.   Their journey, as re-told and re-imagined by Taylor, tracks a bizarre bandwidth of society across the country's heartland, and asks its artists and audiences to take a second look at how the idea of community sometimes fails to unite us, and how it sometimes brings us together in the most surprising ways.

The Walk Across America for Mother Earth is directed by Paul Zimet and composed by Ellen Maddow, collaborators with Taylor Mac on Time Out’s “top ten” production, The Lily’s Revenge.

MEET

Taylor Mac

is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, and sometime director and producer.  TimeOut New York has called him, “One of the most exciting theater artists of our time” and American Theater Magazine says, “Mac is one of this country’s most exciting, heroic and disarmingly funny playwrights.”

His plays include “The Lily’s Revenge” (Obie Award), “The Young Ladies Of” (Jeff Award and GLAAD Media Award Nominations), “The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac” (Herald Angel Award) and “Red Tide Blooming” (Ethyl Eichelberger Award). 

 Taylor has performed his worked in The Sydney Opera House, The San Francisco MOMA and Opera House, New York’s Public Theater, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, The Spoleto Festival, The Bumbershoot Festival, The Time Based Arts Festival, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, London’s Soho Theater, and literally hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, cabarets, and festivals around the globe.    

He has acted in many original plays (by others), dozens of revivals, and in featured roles on television with The BBC2, BBC4, MTV,  and The Sci-Fi Channel. For more info, visit: www.Taylormac.net 

Ellen Maddow

is a founding member of The Talking Band, and has composed for and performed in most of its works. She was a member of The Open Theater, performing in Terminal, Mutation Show, and Nightwalk. She has also performed with Otrabanda Company. Works that she has written and composed include The Necklace (episodes 3 and 7), Delicious Rivers, Painted Snake in a Painted Chair for which she received an Obie award, Tilt, Brown Dog is Dead, and Fern and Rose. Ellen has also written the text and music for five pieces about the avant-garde housewife, Betty Suffer:Bedroom Suite, Betty and the Blenders, Betty Blends the Blues,Dopplebetty, and Betty Suffer’s Theory of Relativity. She also wrote the scores for Belize, The Parrot, Black Milk Quartet, The Plumber’s Helper, New Cities, Star Messengers (all produced by The Talking Band), 1969 Terminal 1996 (directed by Joseph Chaikin), Jubilee andHome/Wire Walking for Risa Jarislow and Dancers. She wrotePersephone for Mettawee River Theatre Company.

Ellen received the 1999 Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theater (along with librettist Paul Zimet). Her work has received Meet the Composer grants, ASCAP Special Awards, a Villager Music Composition Award, a Village Voice OBIE, a 1996 McKnight National Playwrighting Fellowship and a 2006 NYFA Fellowship. She is a member of New Dramatists.

Paul Zimet

is the Artistic Director of The Talking Band. Born and raised in New York City, he studied clarinet and voice at the High School of Music and Art, comparative literature at Columbia College, and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Music-theater works that he has written and directed include: Belize, The Parrot, Star Messengers, Bitterroot, Party Time, Black Milk Quartet and New Cities. He also wrote Shadow Passports and Bone Room, episodes 2 and 8 of The Talking Band’s serial mystery drama, The Necklace. Paul has received the John C. Lippmann “New Frontier” Award and the Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theater, a Playwrights’ Center National McKnight Fellowship, playwriting fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, a New Dramatists/Children’s Theatre Playground commission, a Rockefeller/Creative Capital MAP Fund grant and a Fulbright Fellowship. He received a 2003 Village Voice OBIE award for his direction of The Talking Band production of Painted Snake in a Painted Chair by Ellen Maddow, and also three OBIE awards for his work with the Open Theater and the Winter Project, both directed by Joseph Chaikin. Paul has performed with Otrabanda Company, The Stratford Festival of Canada, and the New York Shakespeare Festival, and recently in Dan Froot’s dance/theater work, Shlammer. Paul is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Smith College.

WATCH

The Walk (a short film of Taylor Mac in London)

Make, starring Taylor Mac

INTERACT

After the show - check back here for an online Q&A as well as other exciting follow up information!

PLAN YOUR NIGHT

Talking Band and Taylor Mac are canvassing the area to find their favorite places to eat, hang out, grab a drink, or take a date before the show. Come back soon to find out what they recommend for you!