Clarence, in a Pause:
A Listening Party

by Heather Christian & Taylor Mac

Saturday, May 30 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 31 at 4pm

Deeply troubled by our country’s polarization, MacArthur Fellows Taylor Mac (librettist) and Heather Christian (composer) have created a new music work about a radical white lefty, named Concerned Citizen, trying to understand a radical right black conservative named Clarence Thomas. The work is a consideration. It’s a prayer for understanding, through the act of wondering. And, in the face of increasing political attack, it reaches for radical empathy. 

Ancram audiences are invited to a listening party to experience a selection of songs from the work. After the concert, Taylor and Heather will lead a dialogue about ideas and themes raised in the piece, and teach a song from the show; the purpose being, to leave the room having de-escalated the rhetoric of our polarization to the tempo and poetry of the song.

Ancram Center’s Play Lab provides theatre artists off all practices with time, space and resources to develop a new, innovative theater project to be presented in the future at Ancram Center or elsewhere. Selected artists spend a week-long residency in Ancram that culminates with a work-in-progress showing. Throughout the residency, Ancram Center makes efforts to connect the artist with the community in meaningful ways through a combination of interactive workshops, open rehearsals, audience discussions, and more.

TAYLOR MAC is a MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a Tony nominee for Best Play, a two-time Obie winner, and the recipient of the International Ibsen Award. Selected works include: Bark of Millions (a fifty-six song—and counting—parade-trance extravaganza for the living library of the deviant theme); The Hang (a jazz-infused Passion play about the final hours of the life of Socrates); A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (a 24-hour performance-art concert about communities building themselves because they’re torn apart); and An American Dionysia (four full-length plays about the polarization of America, to be performed separately or as an ancient Greek festival: Prosperous Fools; The Fre; Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus; and Hir). The concert-doc, Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music, is currently streaming on HBO/Max. 

HEATHER CHRISTIAN is 2025 MacArthur Fellow, Drama Desk and two-time Obie Award winning composer/performer making music centered shows and rituals. She is a  2021 Richard Rodgers Award winner, 2025 Larson Grant winner, 2022 Stephen Schwartz Outstanding New Composer awardee and  Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow. She has been given the Mississippi Governor’s Arts award from her home state for excellence in musical composition. Named a current resident at The Signature Theater in NY, many of her shows, past and present can be seen in the coming years. Recent composing/performing credits include her own work Oratorio for Living Things  (Signature Center NYC 2025, Ars Nova 2022), Terce: A Practical Breviary (HERE Arts Center and Prototype) Animal Wisdom ( The Bushwick Starr, now a motion picture, new production at The Signature Theater in 2026) I am Sending You the Sacred Face (Theater In Quarantine/ YouTube— Vultures Top Theater Experience of 2020), Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage—IndieWire’s #1 Podcast Episode of 2020) in addition to being a lead artist on devised works Mission Drift Nat’l Theater London, The World Is Round BAM). Often a collaborator with dance, her work has recently been seen in various pieces by Jane Comfort (Jane Comfort company) and Matthew Neenan (Ailey). She is a frequent collaborator with Taylor Mac and is delighted to make her debut in the composer’s chair with judy’s new work! Also a veteran here at Ancram, she hosted a series of community workshops for her piece American Drive In. She has released 13 records, owns and operates her own recording studio in Beacon, NY, and can be seen regularly in concert halls and dive bars as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts.