On December 12, TO Live and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and prestigious theatres and cultural institutions around the world present the Pomegranate Arts production Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce…Pandemic!. The special, live streamed event reimagines for this time of social distancing Mac’s celebrated Holiday Sauce show. Join in celebrating the holidays in all of their dysfunction – live streamed December 12 at 7pm, followed by a live streamed after-party with Ryan G. Hinds.

Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! is Christmas as calamity, blending music, film, burlesque, and random acts of fabulousness. Mac is joined by a full band, plus special guests and cameos, all in service of reimagining the songs you love – and the holidays you hate. The program comes on the heels of, and celebrates the release of Mac’s Holiday Sauce album, another opportunity for home-bound audiences to experience Mac’s singular artistry and approach to the holidays.

The Holiday Sauce album celebrates the time of year we hate with unique renditions of songs we love.  In addition to traditional favourites like “God Rest Ye Gentlemen,” “How Can I Keep from Singing?,” “Little Drummer Boy,” and “Silent Night,” the recording features an original entitled “Christmas with Grandma” and covers such as Graham Nash’s “Cathedral”; the Velvet Underground’s “The Black Angel’s Death Song” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties”; and Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids.” It is released by Favorite Fruit, a new company established by Pomegranate Arts. A portion of the album proceeds benefit the LGBT Asylum Task Force.

For Taylor Mac, there is more to the holidays than rampant capitalism and gift giving, and imagination is its own spirituality. This holiday season will be bittersweet for so many. Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! reminds us of the collective power of our chosen families, a message that is particularly resonant this year, when so many have lost so much.

Mac dedicates Holiday Sauce to Mother Flawless Sabrina, Mac’s drag mother, who passed away three weeks before the 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 honouring a local elder who has made a significant contribution to nurturing the queer community in their city. TO Live and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre have selected leZlie lee kam, a fierce, differently-abled queer dyke community activist, storyteller, and 2SLGBTQI+ awareness consultant and workshop facilitator.  Collectively, these elders make up a group Mac is referring to as The Queens; their names will be mentioned in the show, featured on the Holiday Sauce website, and amplified on social media.

Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! is presented live at 7pm EST on December 12. Following the live streams on December 12, the show will be available on-demand on a pay-what-you-can basis from December 13 through January 2, 2021. Tickets

For more information about the Holiday Sauce album and the Holiday Sauce…Pandemic! event, click here.

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, Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, the Sydney Opera House, Boston’s American Repertory Theatre, Stockholm’s Sodra Theatern, the Spoleto Festival, San Francisco’s Curran Theater and MOMA, and literally 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), and 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.

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, lifestyle, entertainment and hospitality. He has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He enjoys discovering delicious eats, tasting spirited treats, and being mesmerized by musical beats.