Drag sensation, performance artist and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant recipient Taylor Mac stopped by Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show on Monday, where judy reminded the audience that queer people have been around throughout every step of history.
Oh, Mac also explained that ‘judy’ is judy’s preferred pronoun: “Judy is my gender pronoun. I choose judy because I wanted a gender pronoun where if anyone roll their eyes it would immediately make them camp…you can’t say judy without emasculating yourself.”
Mac has been touring an incredible 24-hour show featuring popular music from every one of the last 24 decades, weaving together American history with queer history. If that sounds ambitious, it is.
“Sometimes when we’ve toured it we’ve done four six-hour shows over the course of two weeks but we did do a 24-hour concert from beginning to end about two years ago,” Mac said.
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Mac started doing the show before Trump was elected, however, and Colbert asked whether the current president would make it into future performances.
Mac had quite an amazing answer:
“I feel like Donald Trump is the heckler in chief. Sometimes when I’m out on stage I’ll get a heckler out there. I think of Donald Trump as trying to steal the story of America away from America…I learned this in the clubs. If something is threatening to take the story away from the storyteller you have to incorporate that thing into the story at all costs. Otherwise, nobody pays attention to the story. So we have to incorporate Donald Trump into the story but we can’t let him be the lead. We’re the lead.”
Then Mac performed Patti Smith’s “People Are The Power” after explaining, “I think until justice gets back into the world we should just be singing that to close every show.”
Watch the interview, followed by the performance, below:
