NATIONWIDE: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music by Taylor Mac and Matt Ray will be presented around the country as abridged performances and six-hour concerts. The show, which won the Kennedy Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize this year, chronicles the history of the United States through music, beginning with the American Revolution. The show was performed as a 24-hour marathon at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2016.
“A 24-Decade History of Popular Music is a reenactment of how the individual(s) may lose the long game but communities and movements, if continually brought together, have the potential to thrive and bend toward justice,” said Taylor Mac in a statement. “I’m not a teacher. My job is to be a reminder. I’m reminding the audience of the things they’ve forgotten, dismissed, or buried—or that others have buried for them. In this time of obstacle, of political cynicism, amnesia, polarization, oppression, and upheaval, we are in desperate need of a physical, emotional, sensorial, and intellectual reminder that we can use the obstacles to strengthen our bonds and communal actions.”
The Curran Theater and Stanford Live, in association with Magic Theatre and Pomegranate Arts, will co-present A 24-Decade History in four separate six-hour concerts (Sept. 15-24) at the Curran in San Francisco.
UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance will present the complete work in four six-hour concerts at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles (March 15-24, 2018).
An abridged version of the concert will be performed at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. (Sept. 27), at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (March 6, 2018), and at the ASU Gammage in Tempe, Ariz. (April 7, 2018).
