Virtual Variety Show Will Honor Local LGBTQ Elder, Luigi Ferrer and Raise Funds for MDC Pride Scholarship
Miami, Nov. 23, 2020 – Live Arts Miami (LAM) presents Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! as part of LAM’s 2020-21 30th anniversary season. This unique, live-streamed event, taking place on Saturday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m. EST, reimagines Mac’s celebrated Holiday Sauce show for social distancing times. Admission to the event and special after show is FREE with RSVP.
Mac, a 2020 Ibsen Award winner and MacArthur Fellow, and his long-time collaborators, designer Machine Dazzle, Music Director Matt Ray, and producers Pomegranate Arts come together to celebrate the holidays in all of their dysfunction. Conceived as a virtual vaudeville, Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! will blend music, film, burlesque, and random acts of fabulousness to reframe the songs you love and the holidays you hate in the most subversive and cathartic event of the season! For Taylor Mac, there is more to the holidays than rampant capitalism and gift-giving, and imagination is its own spirituality. The show reminds us of our chosen families’ collective power, a message that rings true in this distinctly bittersweet holiday season. The Los Angeles Times has praised the performance for its “freewheeling love and generosity,” calling it “a present from the island of misfit toys…and a Christmas miracle.”
Mac dedicates Holiday Sauce to Mother Flawless Sabrina, Mac’s drag mother, who passed away three weeks before the beloved annual live show made its world premiere at Town Hall NYC in December 2017. As a tribute to her, each institution presenting Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! is honoring a local elder who has made a significant contribution to nurturing the LGBTQ community in their city. LAM has selected HIV/AIDS and bisexual rights activist Luigi Ferrer, co-founder of Pridelines Youth Services. Ferrer and other elders collectively make up a group Mac refers to as The Queens; their names will be mentioned in the show, featured on the Holiday Sauce website, and amplified on social media.
Following the Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! premiere, guests are invited to a special virtual celebration with the cast and surprise guests in honor of local honoree Ferrer. In the spirit of holiday giving and to provide support in this time of need, the public is invited to make donations at any level to fund the MDC Pride Scholarship for LGBTQ students and further assist the Holiday sauce artists amidst the pandemic. After Dec. 12, the show will be available on-demand, on a pay-what-you-can basis, from Dec. 13 to Jan. 2, 2021, on the Live Arts Miami website, with all proceeds also directly benefiting these causes.
On Dec. 2 and 10, in collaboration with Lambda Living and Pioneer Winter Collective’s Werqshop, LAM will offer two free virtual community workshops led by Machine Dazzle, award-winning costume designer of Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! Participants will hand-craft shrines dedicated to their heroes using recycled materials and other objects— another way to honor and celebrate the power of chosen family this holiday season.
Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! was commissioned by The International Ibsen Festival, The Norwegian Ministry of Culture, and The National Theatre of Oslo who presents it with additional support from LAM, Artpark-Lewiston, NY, ASU Gammage at Arizona State University, Berliner Festspiele, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, Curran-San Francisco, FirstWorks/Brown Arts Initiative, The Guthrie Theater, The Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, OZ Arts Nashville, Park Avenue Armory, Seattle Theatre Group and On The Boards, Stanford Live at Stanford University, Teatros del Canal Madrid, TO Live, UtahPresents, and Wexner Center of the Arts at the Ohio State University.
About Taylor Mac
Taylor Mac (who uses “judy,” lowercase sic, not as a name but as a gender pronoun) is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, director, and producer. Judy’s work has been performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center, The Public Theatre and Playwrights Horizons, London’s Hackney Empire, Los Angeles’s Royce Hall, San Francisco’s Curran Theater and MOMA, and hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, opera houses, cabarets, and festivals around the globe. Judy is the author of seventeen full-length works of theater, including A Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Hir, The Lily’s Revenge, and A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which, in its world premiere at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, Wesley Morris of The New York Times called “one of the great experiences of my life.” Mac is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama, a Tony Award Nominee (for Best Play). The recipient of multiple awards including the Kennedy Prize, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert in Theater, the Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, 2 OBIEs, and the one judy is most proud to be associated with, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is currently a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect, the resident playwright at the Here Arts Center, and the 2020 Artist in Residence at WNET’s ALL ARTS. In 2017, Mac was named a MacArthur Fellow and was the first American to be awarded the Ibsen Award for Theater in 2020. More about Mac is available at www.taylormac.org.
Full information about the cast and crew can be found on www.TaylorMacHolidaySauce.com.
WHAT: Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce…Pandemic!
WHEN: Saturday, Dec. 12, 7 p.m. EST
WHERE: Live online via Zoom → RSVP required.
To register, visit www.liveartsmiami.org
Click here for photos and video
ABOUT LIVE ARTS MIAMI
Live Arts Miami is one of the city’s oldest and boldest performing arts series: an action-driven, people-centered platform for powerful performances, impactful community programs and learning experiences that spark dialogue, raise awareness around pressing issues, and open minds and hearts in all who take part. Created in 1990 as Cultura del Lobo, Live Arts Miami is proud to be a part of Miami Dade College’s celebrated Department of Cultural Affairs. For three decades, Live Arts Miami has featured extraordinary performing artists and unforgettable performances, collaborations and public art projects from all over the world. Today, Live Arts Miami is a regional model of principled innovation and excellence in public arts programming. A place for artists, audiences, and MDC students to come together as one. For more information, please visit www.liveartsmiami.org and follow @liveartsmiami on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the latest updates.
The programs of Live Arts Miami are funded by Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; the National Endowment for the Arts; National Performance Network (NPN); the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. MDC Live Arts is a Partner of the National Performance Network (NPN). Major NPN contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Live Arts Miami Contacts: María Montoya, Marketing Specialist, 305-237-7733, mmontoy6@mdc.edu; José A. Portela, Communications Specialist, jvillar2@mdc.edu