Kirk Read’s Comments on Dynasty Handbag & Taylor Mac

Kirk Read (“How I Learned to Snap”), pictured left, wrote these comments after seeing Alone Together At Last: Dynasty Handbag & Taylor Mac, two shows in repertory at CounterPULSE through Sunday…

This was one of those rare nights in the theater where you feel grateful to be alive, to be sharing oxygen and living in these apocalyptic endtimes. Taylor Mac and Dynasty Handbag are a wonderful complement to each other — I’d highly recommend seeing both in a single night. They’re different in key aesthetic ways — Taylor Mac is explosive and emotional, while Dynasty Handbag is mysterious and kaleidoscopic.

Taylor Mac bristles at the idea of comparisons to other artists, so I’ll honor his request to simply describe his work and my experience of it. I’ve never seen Counterpulse so successfully harnassed by a performer using their unamplified voice. Taylor Mac’s solution was to do the entire show next to the audience in a single pool of light. Being a master of stagecraft, he understood how to make the space intimate and immediate. Between rapidfire monologues, he played a ukulele, singing about politics, travel, war, relationships and childhood. He sings with a gorgeous, affecting voice — he did time in “Beach Blanket Babylon” in the early 90s and it shows. There were a number of times I teared up during the show. His drag aesthetic is homemade and approachable, coming out of a tradition of radical faeries, the Cockettes, the Angels of Light and the Ridiculous Theater movement. Taylor Mac is a beautiful freak. If you ran into him on the street, dressed in all his “finery” (as he puts it), instead of saying “You look FAB-ulous,” you might say “You look EXCITING.” You wouldn’t be intimidated or distracted by how perfectly his eyelashes were applied. Rather, you’d be inspired by how freely he shares the essence of who he is. He’ll make you want to walk through the world in a bolder way.

It’s hard to be prepared for Dynasty Handbag because there aren’t a lot of obvious precursors for the work she’s making. She works seamlessly with technology, creating audio tracks and projections that she interacts with onstage. One one level, her work has a quality of childlike innocence; she animates images of cute animals and uses stretches of preverbal sounds. There’s a way in which you’re truly watching a child at play when you see her onstage. But she is also a very controlled performer. She’s not afraid to leave a pool of light and stand in half-darkness. She leaves the stage altogether for several costume changes. While many solo performers could be accused of oversharing, Dynasty Handbag serves up a tall cup of crazy but is skilled in the art of tease and restraint. She knows that people watch the show with equal measures of delight and perplexity. Her work is truly multimedia — the stretches of video and audio are particular to her voice and obviously part of a large theatrical vision. Her eccentricities are a gift, like an irradiated bird’s plumage. Dynasty Handbag generously shares those spots and stripes. She confuses the hell out of you and yet makes perfect sense. But that depends on your willingness to admit your own level of insanity.

A very satisfying evening in the theater. Thank you, Earl Dax, for bringing these folks to San Francisco!