Reviewed by:

• The Taylor Mac Book: Ritual, Realness and Radical Performance ed by David Román and Sean F. Edgecomb
• Benjamin Gillespie

Written and compiled during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Taylor Mac Book is a celebration not only of the legacy and work of performance artist Taylor Mac but also of the magic and power of live performance as a form of communal ritual and queer kinship. This comprehensive collection surveys the life and career of one of New York’s most celebrated performing artists, offering a much-needed critical and contextual analysis of Mac’s work from the early 2000s to present day, especially their pathbreaking immersive marathon performance A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (added as a documentary to HBO’s streaming platform MAX in 2023). Expertly edited by David Román and Sean F. Edgecomb, two of the field’s leading scholars of queer performance, and published in the LGBTQ-focused Triangulations Series, the book positions itself as one that not only celebrates the dazzling career of a singular artist but also recognizes the collaborative nature of both queer [End Page 258] performance and scholarship, advancing theoretical conversations surrounding queer legacy, time, kinship and mentorship, intergenerational exchange, and the importance of a queer archive—themes that dovetail with the previous scholarly contributions of its distinguished editors.

While the volume’s structure mainly follows a chronological path through Mac’s life and career, the editors playfully encourage readers to forge their own queer path in our engagement with the book. While this is a welcome invitation (especially in the age of digital consumption), I urge readers to engage with the book in its entirety, in any order, to fully glean Mac’s theatrical legacy and influence on queer performance and scholarship more broadly. While the editors recognize that no single study could be fully comprehensive, they have ensured a multifocal study on Mac’s theatrical genius that features nearly two dozen diverse contributors, ranging from scholars, artist-collaborators, and Taylor Mac themself.

Mac is known for their genderfuck style of performing, actively deconstructing binary gender norms onstage while questioning society’s hetero-normative values. Mac’s chosen stage pronoun, “judy,” reflects their dragging of gender onstage, although the editors remind us that Mac is not trans-gender in daily life. In a 2019 interview quoted in the book’s introduction, Mac states, “my gender is performer because I feel like I’m always performing my gender” (xi). The editors take time to carefully address Mac’s pronouns at the book’s outset, indicating they do not police the use of pronouns by other authors in the book (as Mac does not police their own pronouns), but that most contributors (including the editors) use the neutral pronoun “they” to refer to Mac’s work (as I do here). This important recognition acknowledges Mac’s queer world-view while also reminding readers that Mac is not transgender, an important distinction in scholarship today given the remarkable and necessary developments in performance scholarship on performance by and about trans and nonbinary folx.

The volume includes a brief introduction contextualizing the history of Mac’s performance followed by roughly a dozen chapters addressing different aspects of Mac’s œuvre over the last twenty-five years. It joyfully embraces and critically frames Mac’s performance history, acknowledging their many and frequent collaborators, especially costume designer Machine Dazzle, performer Tigger! Ferguson, composer and arranger Matt Ray, and musician Viva DeConcini, among others. Notably, the volume features numerous full-color production photos of Mac’s various works, bringing the vibrancy of their costumes and stage presence to the reader.

Román and Edgecomb frame Mac’s work by foregrounding their fool-like persona onstage, always bedazzled with glittering costumes, clown-ish makeup, a camp demeanor, and channeling the fabulousness of drag and theatrical excess. As is the case in classical drama, the fool is always the one who most fully understands the limits of society and pushes those limits as far...

 审阅者：

• 
  《泰勒 Mac 书：仪式、真实性和激进表演》，大卫·罗曼 (David Román) 和肖恩·F·埃奇科姆 (Sean F. Edgecomb) 编辑
•  本杰明·吉莱斯皮

《Taylor Mac Book》是在 COVID-19 大流行最严重的时期编写和编撰的，它不仅是对表演艺术家 Taylor Mac 的遗产和作品的庆祝，也是对现场表演作为一种公共仪式和酷儿形式的魔力和力量的庆祝。亲属关系。这本全面的收藏调查了纽约最著名的表演艺术家之一的生活和职业生涯，对 Mac 从 2000 年代初至今的作品提供了急需的批判性和背景分析，特别是他们开创性的沉浸式马拉松表演《24 年的历史》流行音乐（于 2023 年作为纪录片添加到 HBO 的流媒体平台 MAX）。这本书由酷儿表演领域的两位顶尖学者 David Román 和 Sean F. Edgecomb 精心编辑，并以 LGBTQ 为重点的三角测量系列出版，它的定位是，不仅歌颂一位独特艺术家的耀眼职业生涯，而且认识到酷儿[结束第258页]表现和学术的协作性质，推进围绕酷儿遗产、时间、亲属关系和指导、代际交流以及酷儿档案的重要性的理论对话——这些主题与其之前的学术贡献相吻合尊敬的编辑们。

虽然这本书的结构主要遵循麦克的生活和职业生涯的时间顺序，但编辑们开玩笑地鼓励读者在我们与这本书的接触中开辟自己的酷儿之路。虽然这是一个受欢迎的邀请（尤其是在数字消费时代），但我敦促读者以任何顺序完整地阅读这本书，以充分收集麦克的戏剧遗产以及对更广泛的酷儿表演和学术的影响。虽然编辑们认识到没有任何一项研究能够完全全面，但他们确保对麦克的戏剧天才进行多焦点研究，其中包括近两打不同的贡献者，其中包括学者、艺术家合作者和泰勒·麦克本人。

Mac 以其性别他妈的表演风格而闻名，他在舞台上积极解构二元性别规范，同时质疑社会的异性恋规范价值观。 Mac 选择的舞台代词“朱迪”反映了他们在舞台上对性别的拖累，尽管编辑们提醒我们，Mac 在日常生活中并不是跨性别者。在本书引言中引用的 2019 年采访中，Mac 表示，“我的性别是表演者，因为我觉得我总是在表演我的性别”(xi)。编辑们在本书一开始就花时间仔细地讨论了 Mac 的代词，表明他们不会监管书中其他作者对代词的使用（因为 Mac 不会监管自己的代词），但大多数贡献者（包括编辑）都使用代词。中性代词“他们”来指代 Mac 的作品（就像我在这里所做的那样）。这一重要的认可承认了麦克的酷儿世界观，同时也提醒读者，麦克不是跨性别者，这是当今学术界的一个重要区别，因为在跨性别和非二元性别的表演学术方面取得了显着且必要的发展。

该卷包括一个简要介绍，介绍了 Mac 性能的历史，随后大约有十几章讨论了过去 25 年 Mac 作品的不同方面。它愉快地拥抱并批判性地描述了 Mac 的表演历史，感谢他们众多且频繁的合作者，特别是服装设计师 Machine Dazzle、表演者 Tigger！弗格森、作曲家和编曲家马特·雷以及音乐家维瓦·德康西尼等。值得注意的是，该卷收录了麦克多部作品的大量全彩制作照片，为读者带来了他们服装和舞台表现力的活力。

罗曼和埃奇科姆通过在舞台上突出他们傻瓜般的形象来塑造麦克的作品，他们总是被闪闪发光的服装、小丑般的妆容、营地的举止迷惑，并表现出令人难以置信的变装和夸张的戏剧效果。正如古典戏剧中的情况一样，傻瓜永远是最了解社会极限并将这些极限推得更远的人……