Hir Bulletin

SHARP THEATER BULLETIN

IN THIS ISSUE

PLAYWRIGHT'S PERSPECTIVE

THE POLITICS OF PRONOUNS

JUDYISM

Taylor Mac explores how escaping from a conservative upbringing helped shape Hir.

The Oxford English Dictionary has yet to list a gender-neutral pronoun.

Adam Greenfield considers Taylor Mac’s anthology to date, and Hir’s place within it

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FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

DEAR FRIENDS, Warning to all Taylor Mac fans: Taylor does not appear in this play. Second warning: when the lights come up and the play begins to unfold before you, by all appearances it is as if we are witnessing a classically structured, fourth wall, living room family play. It even has a couch! For the uninitiated, my tongue-in-cheek warnings flag the fact that, heretofore, Taylor’s body of work usually features Taylor in stunning, elaborately conceived drag in spectacularly freewheeling, theatrical extravaganzas. In equal parts surreal, camp, ritual, burlesque, agit-prop, kabuki, and musical, there has always been something gloriously and gleefully subversive in Taylor’s gaudy other-sex pageantry. So the shift into realism takes a moment to process. But it doesn’t take long to appreciate that Hir does not feel constrained by its form. It is as inventive, transformational, and theatrical as any Taylor Mac show, while still working fully on its own terms. The grimy realism of the play vividly foregrounds the wide-angle socioeconomic issues Taylor’s Playwright’s Perspective discusses. It also sharpens the pathos of the returning war vet aspect of the story. But the play does not sit in its realism. In the introductory stage directions to the play, Taylor describes the sought-for stylistic pitch of the acting and design as “absurdist realism.” Taylor writes in elements of exaggeration and repetition that heighten the tone technically, but the primary generation of the play’s blithe absurdity flows from its merrily indomitable mother, Paige.

Larger-than-life mother figures make frequent appearances in the annals of contemporary American gay theater. A stroll through the oeuvre of Christopher Durang, Albert Innaurato, Harry Kondoleon, and Nicky Silver yields many such examples. And in the subcategory of mothers and gay sons, it is not uncommon to find the relationship symbiotically intertwined and unhealthful; think of Mrs. Venable and Sebastian in Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer, or more recently Phyllis and Bishop in Silver’s Fat Men in Skirts. But in many respects, Hir’s Paige is every gay son’s dream, even though that son was born as a daughter. She has championed Max’s decision to transition genders from the beginning and now enforces hir choice of personal pronoun with an English teacher’s grammatical vigilance. She is as ferocious in her support as Williams’s and Silver’s creations are ferocious in their manipulation, but ultimately no less scary. The patriarchy has been overturned, but Paige’s matriarchy is no less tyrannical, albeit much funnier.

When I first read Hir, I assumed Taylor would subvert the play’s realism in the same way Paige subverts the patriarchy. But something surprising happens at the end of the play. The rigidity of Paige’s post-heteronormative morality does not rule the day.

The play bows to the formal potency of its classicism and engenders a moment of anagnoresis, recognition, in the character of the war vet son, Isaac, tellingly nicknamed “I.” There is something profoundly generous, personal, and brave about the way “I” surveys the battleground at play’s end. After a lifelong career in free-form performance that exalts beauty and artifice as an alternative to the falsity of reality, we feel Taylor embrace both the play’s form and perhaps also that dismal childhood in Stockton, California. Maybe the world is changing after all. Maybe we live in a world that does not just need Taylor Mac’s fabulousness. Maybe the world is ready for Taylor Mac’s forgiveness as well.

TIM SANFORD

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR The Sharp Theater Bulletin is generously funded, in part, by the

LIMAN FOUNDATION

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Photo by Zack DeZon

PLAYWRIGHT'S PERSPECTIVE I’m a lover and maker of the alternative, underground, and radical movements, and basically every work I’ve made is somehow rooted in a subculture. Hir, however, is a new kind of play for me as it’s dealing with the mainstream; rather, the remnants of the former body politic and the rise of a new progressive body politic. It seems, to me anyway, that progressives (and even some radicals) are gaining ground in the United States. Hir is about this change and what happens to the remnants of the old world order as a result.

I grew up in Stockton, California at a time when it held the honor of having the highest murder rate (per capita) in America, the third highest illiteracy rate, and rows and rows of cheap urban blight tract houses were being built atop former farmland. Despite its century-old history of being one of the worst places in America to live, people kept moving in. That’s not to say they wanted to be there. In fact, if the daily disparagement I’d hear about Stockton from almost every inhabitant I knew is an accurate indication, nobody wanted to live there. People who professed they liked it would sometimes say, with zero irony, that moving to Stockton was a great idea because if you drove for three hours, in any direction, you’d end up in a place you’d like to be. The problem of economic hardship, or institutionalized prejudices, or complacency, or fear of the unknown, or a lack of education about (or access to) alternatives, or, or, or… whatever the reasons, meant nobody ever—or rarely—drove those three hours.

Stockton, to my family and many others, was a “for now” place; it was where poor or lower-middle-class families could afford their first houses.

We called them starter homes and braved the bad statistics in hopes we could join the upwardly mobile and eventually move on to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, as the matriarch Paige describes in Hir, these homes often became “a starter home we’ve been in for thirty years.” Essentially my hometown was one of those places where the American dream got stuck in an American reality.

The second I developed a feminine walk and became conscious that I wasn’t like the other boys, I started

plotting my escape. My story is not unusual. Most of the working-class queers I know have similar ones. We’re always comparing tales about our oppressive upbringings and priding ourselves with our blue ribbons for worst hometown statistics. We continually talk about how lucky we are that our queerness and our need to survive and find community gave us the extra bit of drive that was needed to get out of those homophobic and transphobic environments. We queers, for the most part, fled to the bigger cities, or radical enclaves, where we try not to look back, lest we turn into a pillar of fast food condiments.

In my time since I left home (25 years), it’s been thrilling to notice how many of those queer refugees, along with the straight radicals (and even progressives), are exploding the oppressive traditions, dictates, laws, and culture we’ve inherited and are creating a new world order in our new homes.

Sure it’s taking time, it should have happened long ago, and isn’t even close to actually being what it needs to be (in terms of dealing with inequality, climate change, and economic disparity), but it’s happening. There is tangible progress. There are also tangible casualties that are a direct result of this new world order we’re helping to create.

I keep reading articles and seeing news reports about how a whole generation of straight white conservatives is being sacrificed to the Fox News gods, how the boys are being left behind in schools, and as I travel around the country performing, I see how many returning soldiers aren’t able to integrate back into society. I equate Stockton, and all the Stocktons, with Arnold and Isaac in the play: the former is an abuser patriarch turned stroke victim and the latter, a prodigal son who is now an extremely damaged war veteran. They’re two people who tried to run their environments using the traditions they’d been given, failed violently, and can’t be allowed to be in charge any longer. But two people who are in the world regardless. Paige, the matriarch of the family, and Max, the youngest sibling (who is transgender and has begun to use the third-sex pronoun “hir” in place of her or him), believe they’re on the verge of freeing themselves. They’ve fought back and are reaping the benefits. It’s glorious. The problem they come up against in the play is: what to do with the collateral damage? Essentially, Hir is my Antigone play.

It’s asking: as we leftists build the new world order, what do we do with the pieces—the towns, ways of life, and human beings—that don’t fit?

TAYLOR MAC JULY 2015

Photo by Zack DeZonn

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BACKSTORY

THE POLITICS OF PRONOUNS

“MAAAAAAAAX COME IN HERE AND EXPLAIN YOUR AMBIGUITY TO YOUR BROTHER.” —Paige in Hir by Taylor Mac The Oxford English Dictionary added about 500 new words in its latest quarterly update, including such splendid neologisms as jeggings, kettlebell, photobomb, and twerk.

These additions serve as a reminder that language is a tool and a living thing, constantly evolving to reflect the changing world it describes. Many of the new words (autotune, crowdfund, retweet, sext, webisode) acknowledge advances in technologies and the creative ways that people use them; some (half-ass, handsy, hot mess, Masshole) herald the graduation of the spicily vernacular into the ranks of the accepted and the codified, while others (birdhouse, stir-fry, tan line), long in common use, seem a bit like lexicographical afterthoughts whose invitations to the party got lost in the mail.

What you will not find among the 500-odd new entries, however, is what Oxford University Press editor Ben Zimmer calls a “lacuna in the English lexicon:” a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun.

According to linguist Dennis Baron, speakers of English have been crying out for such a word since at least the mid-nineteenth century. In an 1852 newspaper report, one author framed his appeal in purely grammatical terms, citing the need for a pronoun to employ in cases where the subject of a sentence is a singular, but unknown or unspecified, individual. (As many have done since then, he rejected the coordinate phrase he or she as “inelegant and bungling,” and the use of the singular they as “a direct violation of the rules of grammar.”) In 1882, a similar plea in the Memphis Free Trade appealed not only to syntactic decency but also to feminism: “As the laws of grammar now stand, the use of he when she may be meant is an outrage upon the dignity, and an encroachment upon the rights, of women. It is quite as important that they should stand equal with men in the grammars as before the law.” But despite a cascade of such laments in various periodicals throughout the latter half of the 19th century—and, notably, despite the coinage of various proposed alternatives, including ne, hiser, ip, and thon, among many others—no gender-neutral pronoun has taken firm hold. More than 150 years later, people are still writing newspapers for advice about this linguistic gap.

In the 21st century, as transgender communities continue to work for visibility, understanding, and equal representation in society, the need for a non-gendered third person pronoun has become all the more pressing, not only to refer to hypothetical individuals of unspecified gender, but, significantly, to refer to specific individuals whose gender identity is neither male nor female. Not everyone believes in a gender binary and some people prefer not to use gendered pronouns, opting instead for neutral alternatives such as the singular they—grammar be damned—or newly coined words like ze (in place of he or she) and hir (in place of his or her). As a matter of

basic respect, transgender and genderqueer people should be identified by their preferred pronoun; when in doubt, the best thing to do is just to ask. (Taylor Mac uses the pronoun judy, which, beyond the obvious benefit of expressing judy’s lived experience of judy’s gender, has the additional merit of being fun to say.)

For those who bristle at the syntactical notion of the singular they, it’s worth noting that English uses an identical second person pronoun, you, for both singular and plural applications. This wasn’t always the case. Until the 16th century, ye/you/your/yours were exclusively plural forms; the second-person singular pronoun forms were thou/thee/ thy/thine. Singular use of you began in the 16th century as a formal designation, while thou lingered for a time to express familiarity or, more often, class inferiority, before gradually falling out of common use altogether. Its disappearance can be understood as evidence of evolving ideas about the coding of class hierarchy in language. One imagines that, much as expressing class distinction in second person pronouns outlived its social value several hundred years ago, distinguishing gender in third person singular pronouns may eventually be construed as an archaic linguistic notion. As author Davey Shlasko recently noted in an essay for Feministing, “enforcing language norms is a way of enforcing power structures.”

It’s also worth noting that genderless pronouns are already being formally acknowledged elsewhere in the world. The Swedish Academy’s SAOL dictionary included the gender-neutral pronoun hen (an alternative to the male pronoun han and the female hon) in its latest update in April. The addition reflects the public’s recent embrace of the word, which has been promoted not only by LGBTQ groups, but also by teachers at nurseries, preschools and kindergartens, many of whom, according to the Washington Post, “increasingly argue that the pronoun’s usage allows children to grow up without feeling the impact of gender biases.”

The Swedish case is a helpful reminder that, when it comes to language, evolution is rarely a top-down proposition. At the end of the day, the good people at lexicographical temples like the OED and the SAOL are not tasked with sanctioning approved vocabulary so much as documenting what people are already doing. Wonderfully, messily, the coining and mainstreaming of new words has always been a grassroots affair. It’s you and I who are the wordsmiths, the culture-makers. When you use your friend or coworker or cousin’s preferred pronoun, you’re not just being respectful—though that’s always a good place to start—you’re also participating in the radical and necessary project of what Taylor Mac calls “dreaming the culture forward.”

Which is all to say: if you’re waiting for permission to use non-binary pronouns, don’t. The dictionary’s job is to catch up to us.

SARAH LUNNIE

LITERARY MANAGER

CASTING ANNOUNCEMENT KRISTINE NIELSEN PH: Betty's Summer Vacation (Obie Award), Crazy Mary, Miss Witherspoon. BROADWAY: You Can't Take It with You, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike (Tony Award nomination). OFF-BROADWAY: Why Torture is Wrong... (Drama Desk Award nomination).

DANIEL ORESKES

PH debut. BROADWAY: The Miracle Worker, Billy Elliot, Aida. FILM & TV: Coming Up Roses, “The Sopranos,” “Law & Order.”

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TOM PHELAN

PH debut. THEATER: Hair (Theatre 360). TV: “The Fosters.”

CAMERON SCOGGINS PH: Pocatello, The Big Meal. OFF-BROADWAY: Lovers.

FILM & TV: Ironwood, Hunter & Game, The Happy Sad, “The Good Wife,” “The Blacklist,” “Only Human.”

THE AMERICAN VOICE

JUDYISM

In the opening moments of the show, an actress who introduces herself as “Time,” stuffed into a scrappy-glamorous, beautifully ornate hourglass dress, her head trapped inside a cuckoo clock, rails against the play we’re about to see: a love story between Bride and Groom that culminates in a wedding.

“INSTITUTIONALIZED NARRATIVE!” Time cries, “This is not something to enjoy. It is ugly. Plastic. Is a plastic deck chair fun? No! It is tacky! This is the most base, poorly crafted, pulled together at the last minute, ready for mass consumption, demonstrative, manipulative, repetitive, oversexed, histrionic, reductive piece of crap known to mankind… Now I, we, are forced to play stock characters.”

If you saw Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge (2009), this image is surely stamped in your brain. An audacious, five-hour extravaganza, this gamechanging, genre-hopping event follows the story of a flower—the Lily, played by Mac—who falls in love with the play’s blushing bride. Forbidden to pursue this union, the Lily embarks on a journey to dismantle theatrical norms, hijacking the story in hopes of creating a new narrative. As an event itself, Mac’s play fulfills the Lily’s quest, defying the ways we expect plays to behave, smashing Elizabethan verse drama and Japanese Noh together with ballet and the American musical to create something wholly new. Uprooting itself from the pot it’s been planted in, the Lily takes centerstage: “From now on it’s my story,” the flower pronounces. “All mine.”

You can’t really take stock of Taylor Mac’s work without considering the influence of Theatre of the Ridiculous, particularly Charles Ludlam, whose ghost seems to loom gaily over each entry. Fusing the modernist avantgarde with camp, commedia, and drag, Ludlam’s work is a self-conscious mix of high (literary) and low (pop) culture; a pastiche of classical influences repurposed to form a kind of anarchic, flamboyant pageantry that— emerging at a watershed moment for gay lib—became the first canonized queer theater movement in the U.S. But as he devoted himself to experimentation, recycling cultural detritus into a form that was immediate and utterly new, Ludlam’s aim went beyond just re-making theater; he aimed to re-direct our cultural imagination. Growing up on Long Island at a time when being gay meant being an outcast, he was now a man without a closet, and through his work he hoped to liberate his audiences from the old paradigm, to equalize us by reimagining the stories we tell.

Yes, Mac stands on the shoulders of the Ridiculous, resurrecting their glittery dime-store aesthetic and humanistic vision, but only to broaden and transfigure the form into a richer, more radical instrument of satire and social commentary. Ludlam’s drag, for example, was a collage of iconic women, creating hyperbolized, “gender-fuck” interpretations of (most famously) Camille or Maria Callas, aimed to dismantle our notions of masculinity and femininity; and his version of Bluebeard (1970) reimagines that creepy antihero as a mad scientist hell-bent on creating a third gender which combines both sexes. For Mac, though, the entire notion of gender seems irrelevant, non-binary, an entirely fluid concept; his gender pronoun of choice, waggishly, is “judy.” Judy’s characters are wholly original inventions, and the drag is omnisexual, unhinged by any notion of gender. (Pointedly, the Lily is a flower, neither male nor female.) Driven instead by the sharp cultural criticism at work in the writing, judy’s drag fuses glamorous and grotesque, reflecting both the materialistic, established culture under attack and also the disfiguration it causes.

And where Ludlam’s comedic genius channeled the classical Clown type (entertainer, harlequin), drawing on his mastery of commedia stagecraft, Mac is more interested in playing The Fool. “The Fool is a perpetual outsider,” judy said in a 2008 interview. “A shaman. A queer. And a queer is not exclusively or merely a homosexual but, as [downtown performer] Penny Arcade says, a person who at an early age was ostracized by society to such a degree that she could never possibly ostracize another human being. The Fool brings an

understanding of the social contract because she was born into it, but has the ability to release people from the social contract because she was rejected from it.” Traditionally, The Fool sits to the side of our protagonist, lending insight to the play’s proceedings from the sidelines like a sort of clairvoyant peanut gallery, able to see beyond the imposed boundaries of a society. Mac puts this figure centerstage. “I am attempting to get The Fool back into the court,” judy continues, “because society is in need of her fools. If we are to break free of a compassionless policy that supports torture, oppression and greed, our leaders, our government officials and CEOs, our movers and shakers, and the average citizen, need to be reminded of the range of their humanity. The Fool is proof and a challenge to see that we are many.”

Mac’s 22-play anthology spans the last two decades and is a collection of audacious, jaw-dropping theatrical feats (and I wish I had enough space on this page to cite them all). The Face of Liberalism (2003), a one-judy show billed as “a mish-mash of original songs, parodies, stories, and mental illness,” played for six months in the basement of the Slide Bar on Bowery.

Performed by The Lord of Misrule, Mac’s face painted as an American flag with thumbtacks spirit-gummed to judy’s jaw, this performance crossexamined the fear, jingoism, and xenophobia in our culture in the wake of 9/11. Red Tide Blooming (2006) was a musical extravaganza in which Mac played a green-skinned hermaphrodite named Olokun who, shunned by Suburban society, moves to the Big City in search of a community of freaks like itself. The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac (2008), a manic, streamof-conscious solo performance, criticizes homogenization and our culture of fear while judy gleefully accompanies judyself on the ukulele. And, massive and anarchic, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (2011) is a musical that centers on a motley group of environmental activists who escape “Real America” in hopes of establishing a nomadic utopia.

Photo by Derrick Little On its surface, Hir is nothing like any of these plays: Mac’s not performing in it; no one’s in drag (in the traditional sense); the action is linear and climactic; and, for chrissakes, it’s set in a living room.

But the seismic tension grinding underneath is profoundly aligned with his career-long war on traditional narratives, and in fact this might be judy’s most subversive play yet. “I believe homophobia, racism, and sexism (in the theater) often manifests itself through the championing of ‘Realism,’” judy said in a 2013 speech. The entrance to Hir is typical enough: Isaac the prodigal son returns home to confront a household in disorder, so he goes about rebuilding what it was. But the “well-made” form Hir takes is a Trojan Horse, a familiar vessel designed to ambush our institutions from within.

“What I was trying to do was write a eulogy for the kitchen-sink drama, as a metaphor for the old world orders that aren’t working anymore,” judy said in a 2014 American Theatre interview. Though Isaac does everything he can to hold on to the world he once knew, it’s no longer there. Mac continues, “Justin Vivian Bond, as Kiki, says in the Carnegie Hall show [Kiki and Herb Will Die for You], ‘I’ve been to your institutions! I’ve been to your learning facilities!

I’ve been to your churches!’ Since I heard that, I thought about how I grew up in this conservative world—homogenous, suburban, what is often called ‘Real America.’ I went to the churches and I went to the learning facilities, so I learned that culture, and now I’ve broken out of it and am learning, in my adult life, a whole new way of living and being.” With no interest in or need for the dominant culture, Mac is building a new cultural narrative and community through judy's work: a queer space. And everyone is welcome.

ADAM GREENFIELD

ASSOCIATE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Leadership support for the New Works Lab is generously provided by the Time Warner Foundation.

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NOW IS THE TIME, HIR IS THE PLACE

WELCOME NEW FUNDERS! Playwrights Horizons was delighted to welcome the following foundations into our family of funders over the last year:

Thank you for supporting the creation of bold, progressive new theater which explores an ever-changing world.

Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts

35 years ago, donor support for March of the Falsettos advanced the conversation about AIDS.

Ford Foundation

This year, your support for Hir is advancing the conversation about gender roles and identity.

Hess Foundation Howard Gilman Foundation

WE LOOK FORWARD TO THE FUTURE.

J.M. Kaplan Fund

To make a gift, please visit PHnyc.org or contact Leigh Ann Brienza at LBrienza@PHnyc.org or (212) 564–1235 x3145.

PERFORMANCE CALENDAR SUN

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NOVEMBER 1

2:00 PM 7:00 PM

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SYMPOSIUM 7:00 PM

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POST-PERFORMANCE DISCUSSIONS

7:30 PM

PPDs with the creative team have been scheduled for the following dates:

2:00 PM 7:30 PM

OCTOBER 21 OCTOBER 25

2:00 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM 7:30 PM

OCTOBER 30 We hope you can take part in this important aspect of our play development process.

Post-performance discussion

2:00 PM 7:30 PM

<

2:00 PM 7:30 PM

7 PM Symposium, see below for details

2:00 PM 7:30 PM

We recommend Hir for audiences 13+

2:00 PM 7:00 PM

Join us for our Symposium, a panel discussion where the playwright asks the questions. Reserve your seat to this FREE event on November 2 at 7:00 PM by visiting PHnyc.org/Symposium.

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(Following the matinee)

HELPFUL INFORMATION HOW TO RESERVE YOUR SEATS u ONLINE: visit our ticketing site TicketCentral.com/PlaywrightsHorizons

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MEMBERS Tickets (reg. $65) are $45.

YOUNG MEMBERS 30&Under Member tickets are $25; Student Member $15.

PATRONS & Gen PH MEMBERS Reserve your house seats by calling the Individual Giving Assistant at (212) 564–1235 x3143.

GUEST TICKETS ­subject to availability u SUBSCRIBERS: You may order one guest ticket for $50 each per package. u FLEXPASS HOLDERS: You may use tickets in your account to bring guests.

Add tickets to your account by calling Ticket Central, while supplies last.

u MEMBERS: Order one guest ticket per package per production for $50 when you reserve your own. u YOUNG MEMBERS: Guest tickets are $35. u PATRONS: You may order up to two tickets for $50 each. u Gen PH MEMBERS: A maximum of six membership tickets may be used per production. Two guest tickets per production may be purchased at the guest rate of $50 each. Additional tickets are full price.

TICKET PICK-UP AND RELEASE POLICIES We would prefer to hold tickets for pick-up at the box office to expedite ticket exchanges. If you request that your tickets be mailed, they will be sent out immediately, UNLESS your performance date takes place in fewer than 10 days, in which case they will be held at the box office. If you are unable to attend a performance for which you have a reservation, please call Ticket Central at least 24 hours prior to your performance.

NEIGHBORHOOD DISCOUNTS *CHEZ JOSEPHINE

414 West 42nd Street French (212) 594–1925 Complimentary glass of house wine with dinner.

Reservations suggested.

*WEST BANK CAFE

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GETTING TO THE THEATER

The closest subway stop is 42nd Street on the A, C, and E, trains at Eighth Avenue.

You may also take the 1, 2, 3, 7, N, R, Q, or S trains to 42nd Street/Times Square, or the B, D, M and F to 42nd Street/Bryant Park at Sixth Avenue.

The M42 Crosstown & M104 buses are also available for your convenience.

OTHER QUESTIONS?

Call our offices at (212) 564–1235, 10am–6pm (Mon-Fri).

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Season ID required. Limit one per season package. Subject to availability.

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L’ALLEGRIA 623 9th Avenue Italian (212) 265–6777 10% discount on entire check when paying in cash. Unavailable on Friday & Saturday.

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LITTLE TOWN NYC 366 West 46th Street Contemporary Brewpub (212) 677-6300 15% discount on entire check.

THE MEAT FACTORY STEAKHOUSE “Brazil Brazil” 330 West 46th Street Brazilian Steakhouse (212) 957–4300 10% discount on entire check when paying in cash, Sun.–Thurs.

WESTWAY DINER 614 9th Avenue Diner (212) 582–7661 10% discount on purchase.

YUM YUM 3 658 9th Avenue Thai and Vietnamese (212) 956–0639 10% discount on purchase.

YUM YUM BANGKOK 650 9th Avenue Thai (212) 262–7244 10% discount on purchase.

SPECIALTY ITEMS

HOTELS YOTEL 570 10th Avenue (646) 449-7775 Discounts vary per season.

PARKING MANHATTAN PARKING 475 West 41st Street. $15 flat rate for 6 hours.

Download the discount coupon in the “Plan Your Visit” section of our website or ask for a coupon at the concessions counter during your visit.

DRAMA BOOK SHOP 250 West 40th Street (212) 944–0595 10% discount (some items excluded).

SARDI’S 234 West 44th Street American Traditional (212) 221–8440 Complimentary glass of house wine with entrée. Reservations suggested.

THEATRE ROW DINER 424 West 42nd Street Diner (212) 426–6000 10% discount on purchase.

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BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR

HIR Written by

Directed by

TAYLOR MAC NIEGEL SMITH OCTOBER 16–NOVEMBER 29, 2015

Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater This is the second of six productions in the 2015/16 Season.

#HirPH

MEET THE TEAM TAYLOR MAC

(Playwright). Taylor Mac (who uses “judy,” lowercase sic, not as a name but as a gender pronoun) has had judy’s plays/works presented/produced at New York City’s Lincoln Center and The Public Theater, the Sydney Opera House, American Repertory Theatre, Stockholm’s Sodra Theater, the Spoleto Festival, the SF MOMA, and literally hundreds of other theatres, museums, music halls, opera houses, cabarets, and festivals around the globe. Judy is the author of seventeen full-length plays and performance pieces including The Lily’s Revenge (Obie Award); The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (named “One of the Best Plays of 2011” by The New York Times); The Young Ladies Of (Chicago’s Jeff Award nomination for best solo); and in collaboration with Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman, and Paul Ford, Mac created The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville. Mac is currently creating a 24-hour durational performance work called A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, as well as a Dionysia Festival of four original plays, all of which deal in some way with our cultural polarization and include Hir, The Fre (commissioned by The Children’s Theater Company), The Bourgeois Oligarch (commissioned by the American Repertory Theater), and a site-specific musical set in The Ramble in Central Park about Harry Hay and the Radical Fairy movement. Mac is an alumnus of both the HERE Arts Center Resident Artists program and New Dramatists.

NIEGEL SMITH (Director) is a theater director and performance artist who sculpts social spaces into unique communal envi-

ronments where we make new rituals, excavate our pasts, and imagine future narratives. He is the current Artistic Director of The Flea Theater. His theater work has been produced by Classical Theatre of Harlem, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, The Invisible Dog, Magic Theatre, New York Fringe Festival, New York Live Arts, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, The Public Theater, Summer Play Festival, Todd Theatre, and Under the Radar, and his walks have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute, and Visual AIDS. He often collaborates with artist Todd Shalom. Together, they conceive and stage interactive performances in public and private environments. He is a ringleader of Willing Participant (www.willingparticipant.org), an artistic activist organization.

Smith was the associate director of the Tony Award-winning musical Fela!—restaging that production in London, Lagos, and its world tour; assistant directed the Off-Broadway production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; and both the Broadway and Off-Broadway productions of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change. He has worked on the artistic staffs of The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, and Providence Black Rep. He is a 35th Anniversary Artist-in-Residence at Second Stage Theatre and the Associate Artistic Director of Elastic City. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Smith has received grants and fellowships from Brooklyn Arts Council, Theater Communications Group, Tucker Foundation, and Van Lier Fund. www.niegelsmith.com Photo by Zack DeZonn

8 Photo by Zack DeZon