An uprooted lily goes on a quest to wed a human bride and destroy The God of Nostalgia. Genre squishing Taylor Mac and a company of 40+ unravel our national pastime of melancholy remembrances. The Lily's Revenge is a 5 part extravaganza featuring live music, wild costumes, vaudevillian theatrics, macabre entr'actes, a million sequins, and a few flowers. "intelligent, endlessly surprising, and above all spectacularly entertaining. It inspires hyperbolic pronouncements like "the most important event of the theater season" ...and then thumbs its nose at such portentous preposterousness (or bares its bottom; it's that kind of cheeky show, after all)" -Martin Denton  READ MORE

The Lily's Revenge starts at 6:30pm and lasts about five hours.

Written and Conceived by Taylor Mac
Dramaturgy by Nina Mankin
Directed by Paul Zimet, Rachel Chavkin, Faye Driscoll, Aaron Rhyne, David Drake, and Kristin Marting.
Composed by Rachelle Garniez
Production Stage Manager: Julia Funk
Musical Direction and Arrangements by Matt Ray
Costumes by Machine Dazzle
Makeup by Derrick Little
Sets by Nick Vaughn
Lights by Seth Reiser
Puppets by Emily Decola
Part Four Video by Aaron Rhyne
Part One Choreography by Julie Atlas Muz
Associate Producer Abrons Art Center

Starring (in alphabetical order):
Vanessa Anspaugh, Kayla Asbell, Jonathan Bastiani, Salty Brine, World Famous *BOB*, Heather Christian, Matthew Crosland, Darlinda Just Darlinda, Machine Dazzle, Mieke Duffly, James Tigger! Ferguson, Daphne Gaines*, Sashi Gollub, Ikuko Ikari, Barbara Lanciers, Kristine Lee, Miss Bianca Leigh, Taylor Mac, Ellen Maddow*, Glenn Marla, Muriel Miguel*, Una Aya Osato, Frank Paiva, Cyndi Perczek, Edith Raw, Kim Rosen, Tina Shepard*, Saeed Siamak, Phillip Taratula*, Rae C Wright*, Nikki Zialcita, Amelia Zirin-Brown

*denotes Actors Equity Association

 
With additional  filmed performances by Cary Curran, Coleman Domingo, David Drake, Bridget Everett, Matt Fraser, Tracey Gilbert, Karen Hartman, Morgan Jenness, Karen Kohlhaas, Lisa Kron, Nina Mankin, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, Our Lady J, Mandy Patinkin, James Scruggs, Lucy Thurber and voice over work by Justin Bond.

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Find out more about the show on The Lily's Revenge Wiki

Taylor Mac on the Epic Extravaganza

RSVP to the LILY Event

Photos: Karl Giant
Title Design: Yvan Greenberg

THE LILY'S REVENGE was developed at HERE Arts Center through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) with the assistance of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program; and at New Dramatists as part of the Working Sessions Program and with support from the Creativity Fund.
THE LILY'S REVENGE is a project of Creative Capital, which currently receives support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The TOBY Fund, The James Irvine Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, and more than 150 other individuals and institutional donors; and was made possible in part by The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation; the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, supported by Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; Ars Nova; the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Program; The JB Harter Charitable Trust; and The Visionary Trust.

Taylor Mac’s approach to theatre stems from a belief that people are an amalgamation of definitions and ideas.  We are a culmination of a past altered and/or forgotten as well as a future we obsessively imagine.  Our DNA is enriched with age and variance.  We move around in multifaceted gender, race, and emotions.  We are hateful and wonderfully loving, greedy and giving, scared witless and tremendously brave in our intelligence – all at the same time.

As a result his work is primarily a response to and an exploration of homogeneity.  Combining various genres and techniques, he writes solo and ensemble plays that juxtapose stream-of-consciousness images from such topics as the masculine "War on Terror", white appropriation of black culture, and patriarchy in romance. By showing the duality of human beings – and having that duality reflected in the text, aesthetic, and performance style – he provides a balance to our adoration of sameness.

Taylor Mac creates both large-ensemble performance plays and solo-works. In 2007 the Village Voice, Time Out, and The New York Press named him one of New York’s best.  His plays have been presented in literally hundreds of venues all over Europe, Australia, and the United States including: The Sydney Opera House, Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater, London's Soho Theatre, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, Portland's Time Based Arts Festival, Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival, The San Francisco MOMA, and upcoming at The Spoleto Festival. Taylor has performed solo for the BBC and has been a guest artists for Fischerspooner, Nina Hagen, The Dresden Dolls, the Olivier Award winning “C’est Duckie”, Weimar NY, and many more.  Quite possibly he’s the only performer in the world to work with Karen Finley and Mandy Patinkin.  Vintage Press, New York Theatre Review, New York Theatre Experience have published his texts and he is the recipient of The Edinburgh Festival's Herald Angel Award, a GLAAD Media Nomination, three Brighton Best of Festival awards, PS 122's first ever Ethyl Eichelberger award, a NYSCA Grant, The Franklin Furnace Grant, a Peter S. Reed Grant, EST’s New Voices Fellowship, A Mabou Mines Suite (with collaborator Elizabeth Swados) and he is currently a HERE Arts Center Resident Artist and a member of New Dramatists.