Taylor Mac, Comparison is Violence – Curatorial Statement

December 15, 2011

By PuSh Festival Executive Director Norman Armour

He’s back!

Taylor Mac is back. And this time, he’s serious. Seriously. Well, not so seriously. But he is back.

Remember him from 2009? Maybe you caught him headlining Club PuSh. Maybe you were caught by the photo of him that served as the Festival’s signature image that year. Come on, surely you remember… he was regaled in all his sequined, coifed and coutured splendor—as striking as a peacock in full bloom. Regardless, there’s a good chance you may have been caught off guard.

Taylor is disarming. Not in some superficial, shocking way, but in the way that his take on the world, his take on life, and his take on performance, will make a die-hard fan out of the most cynical and world-wearied. Underlying Taylor Mac’s work is a vision of a world and a revolution one could believe in. What’s also remarkable is the way her/his alpha-persona never loses sight that we all are performers eargerly awaiting our time on stage in the limelight. Each one of us singular, one of a kind, with nothing and no one to be compared to—because yes…comparison is violence.

On countless occasions, Taylor Mac was written up by media as “a cross between Ziggy Stardust and Tiny Tim.” Taylor chose to take matters into his own hands, and take his backstage rants out front and centre. Essentially make a show of it. He also thought to take the bull the by the horns—to celebrate the songs of Tiny Tim and David Bowie’s 70’s glam alter ego. (If you have a big question mark hovering above your head right now, simply Google “ukulele + Tiny Tim.”) Join us at Club PuSh for a night of songs, anecdotes, observations and the occasional rant.

In the meantime, as Oscar Wilde quipped, “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.”

Click here to read more about Taylor Mac at Club PuSh 2012 with Comparison is Violence