Title : How Taylor Mac Trained His Vocal Cords for a Marathon
URL Link : How Taylor Mac Trained His Vocal Cords for a Marathon
How Taylor Mac Trained His Vocal Cords for a Marathon
From “Shenandoah” to “Born to Run,” from “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to “Purple Rain,” the performance artist Taylor Mac spanned more than two centuries last weekend in his spectacularly glittery, joyously excessive, drag-filled 24-hour journey through the history of America and its pop sounds, “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music.” Of the many feats he accomplished during the marathon at St. Ann’s Warehouse — queering the American Songbook, pitting Stephen Foster and Walt Whitman in a wrestling match — perhaps the most basic was the most crucial: His voice held up.
It remained remarkably untouched over a full day — 246 songs! — of almost constant singing and speaking, belting and shouting. On Monday afternoon, as a crowd of audience members gathered at his invitation in Brooklyn Bridge Park to unwind and reminisce, Mr. Mac gave a brief interview — here edited and condensed — about his vocal strategy.
What goes into making a performance like this vocally possible?
The main way was doing it over a five-year period, so it wasn’t like we were trying to cram it into a four-week rehearsal period. We learned how to sing a song multiple times over five years in performance, and then we put it together.
How did you organize those years?
We marathon-trained it. So we started off doing 90-minute shows, then we pushed it to three-hour shows, then we did a five-hour show. We did two six-hour shows and then we did a 12-hour show, all over the course of the five years.
So I knew that I was going to be able to have a voice for 12 hours. And then after that, I wasn’t sure. After I did the 12-hour show I thought, “I have another three hours in me, easy, and then I really don’t know.”
So then what?
I went back through my list and thought: “Where can I push it? Where do I need to hold back?” We always had an ear to how songs should be in the order to give myself a little break so I wouldn’t have to sing so loud.
Was there anything special you were drinking or taking during the show?
Just water with electrolyte drops in it. And we had a little green-tea extract we would put in when it got a little later. And I did B-vitamin shots. It was primarily about trying to remind myself to hydrate, but not too much, ’cause I’m in charge of the show and I’m trying to keep it going without too many breaks.
What was the most daunting part?
I was most concerned that Act VII [from the 1950s to the ’80s] is the hardest vocally, and that’s toward the end. I was maybe the most nervous about the “Soliloquy” [from “Carousel,” 1945] because I wanted it to sound a certain way, where I’m not screaming it or gargling it or cracking my cords. I just wanted to be able to tell the story of it and respect the song in a way, but also turn it into what we needed it to be. And we sing the “Soliloquy” at Hour 17.
But what I found is even when my voice would kind of go out, if I took it easy for a couple of songs, it would come back. So it wasn’t until the final decade that I felt a little uch. But even that was O.K. It was not optimal, but … .
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