Taylor Mac (actor/Playwright/Performance Artist) is author and performer of the solo-shows, “The Face of Liberalism,” “Okay,” and “Cardiac Arrest or Venus on a Half-Clam.” He has performed in a variety of venues including PS 122, Joe’s Pub, FEZ, CBGB’s, and the San Francisco Opera House. Recently he headlined the 8th annual Queer at Here Festival, appeared in Karen Finley’s “Make Love,” opened for music icon Nina Hagen, and played his first Martian opposite C. Thomas Howell in the Sci-Fi Channel original feature, “Graveland.” His plays/work have been published by Vintage, Smith and Kraus and Lodestar Quarterly. He is the recipient of the Ensemble Studio Theater’s New Voices Fellowship in playwrighting and is currently working on a new piece, commissioned by Dixon Placed, entitled “Tarred and Feathered.” Every Friday Taylor host a weekly party called “DoppleBanger” at the now infamous Slide bar. This summer, as part of the “Imagine Festival,” Taylor will be hosting, performing, and curating a performance art response to the Republican Convention entitled, “Live Patriot Acts, Patriot’s Gone Wiiiiiild,” at PS 122. You can catch him in boy-drag this fall when he plays the title role in “Orpheus,” a new rock musical produced by HERE.

What is the strangest thing you have ever witnessed on the streets of New York?

In 1992, the very first day I arrived in New York, (after spending two weeks hitchhiking from Nevada), on 7th Avenue and 28th St., I saw a butt naked woman with bright pink hair sitting, in the snow, on the cold concrete with a monkey atop her head. The monkey, on a leash, was biting her and she was calling it a mother fucker. Everybody walked by as if it were just another day in the city.

Who inspires you?

When I was 18 I spent nine months walking across the country with a group of political activist, freaks, aging hippies, queers, Belgian tourists, and mentally handicapped people who had been displaced from their homes by Ronald Reagan. Every so often, on “The Walk”, we would have talent/no talent shows. A “homeless by choice,” dumpster diving, four toothed, poet named Professor Creek Water would read poems about insect rights that he’d written on scraps of whatever. The memory of his perpetually sun burned nose, crackling voice, and fierce commitment to imagery inspires me to this day. He reminds me that creativity is life and life is good. Also Tom Spanbauer, Judy Garland, Jeffrey Wright, Annie Lennox, Tom Waits, Italo Calvino, Mercedes Ruehl, Mikhail Bulgakov, Naomi Wallace, Nina Simone, Larry Kramer and George W. Bush.

If you could become someone else for a day who would it be?

George W. Bush. I’d announce that I’m in favor of a woman’s right to choose, homosexual marriage, stem cell research, affirmative action, taxing the rich, and that I lied to the American people about the war on Iraq. I’d say that being an anti-intellectual religious fanatic is not the best way to lead a country whose ideals are based on melting in a pot. I’d top it all off by stating that I am really a pig bottom who is having a torrid affair with Antonin Scalia. Then I’d get a good nights sleep and let the real George W. sort out the mess in the morning.

If you were going to produce a reality TV show what would it be?

I would take high ranking political figures and make them work for minimum wage in service positions. Even if they didn’t learn anything it would be fun to watch W. and Cheney scrub toilets.

Which famous Fairy Tale Character are you?

I like to think of myself as the hen who lays the golden eggs.