X Clarence, in a Pause: A Listening Party

Saturday, May 30 & Sunday, May 31

at Ancram Center for the Arts

by Heather Christian & Taylor Mac

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

HEATHER CHRISTIAN is