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The genre-defying theater artist Taylor Mac will celebrate the re-opening of the Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park in Battery Park City with an intimate evening of music on Tuesday, July 29. Taylor Mac: In Concert will feature songs from their hit shows, including the marathon 24-Decade History of Popular Music, as well as new sea shanties honoring downtown New York’s nautical past.
The performance will be free and open to the public, though admission is first-come, first-served. RSVPs are available and encouraged but don’t guarantee entry, and walk-ins are welcome. Be sure to bring your comfiest blanket or chair and arrive early!
RECOMMENDED: Free outdoor theater this summer in New York, including Shakespeare in the Park
Located near Manhattan’s southern tip, the park was closed for a two-year pause in a coastal resiliency effort to protect lower Manhattan from storm surges and sea level rise. A series of programs this summer, including the 44th edition of the Battery Dance Festival, will also take place at the park.
Mac—who Time Out’s Adam Feldman earlier this year praised as “a Fabergé radical: beautiful, ridiculous and full of hidden tricks”—is fresh from the success of “Prosperous Fools,” a dazzling new satire of the art world which premiered at Theater for a New Audience last month. Feldman, in his adoring review of that show, went on: “The writer-performer—whose pronoun of choice is the puckish judy—pilots audiences through fantastical journeys, guided by the compass of a magnetic individuality.”
With modern sea shanties, expectedly fabulous outfits and headpieces, and a backing band comprising Matthew Dean Marsh and long-time collaborators Danton Boller, Viva DeConcini and Joel E. Mateo, the concert will surely continue in that legacy. A multitalented performer, writer and all-around creative, Mac is a MacArthur fellow, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tony nominee and a recipient of the International Ibsen Award.
Taylor Mac: In Concert is hosted by the LMCC (formerly known as the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), which serves, connects, and makes space for artists and community in Lower Manhattan. More information about their often-free programs can be found on their website.