NEW YORK — Taylor Mac does not set out to bite the hand that feeds in a new play satirizing cultural philanthropy. The MacArthur “genius grant” recipient claims to be “just trying to get some lipstick on it.”
Set at a not-for-profit dance company’s gala, “Prosperous Fools” invites questions about the moral value of philanthropy in a society denounced by the comedy as “feudal.” A boorish patron goes mad trying vainly to wield his lacking creative capital and thus confirms the choreographer’s fears of selling out to a sleazy oligarch who represents everything his art opposes. The show, written by Mac and directed by Darko Tresnjak, runs through June 29 at Brooklyn’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center.
“I’m not trying to hurt anybody. I’m trying to get people to think differently about the world,” said Mac, whose gender pronoun is “judy.”
“I just wish that all of the great philanthropists of America, and the world, would lead with, ‘This is a temporary solution until we can figure out how to make a government of the people, for the people, by the people,'” Mac added. “Instead of, ‘This is the solution: I should have all the money and then I get to decide how the world works.’”
Don’t let present day parallels distract you. The fundraiser’s honored donor enters atop a fire-breathing bald eagle in a black graphic tee, blazer and cap much like Elon Musk’s signature White House getup. He later dons the long red tie popular in MAGA world. But the resemblance doesn’t mean Mac is meditating solely on recent events such as President Donald Trump’s billionaire-filled administration and tightening grip over cultural pillars including the Kennedy Center.
The script reflects personal frustrations with philanthropy’s uneven power dynamics navigated throughout a 30-year career spent in what Mac described as “a million handshaking ceremonies,” first as a cater-waiter and eventually as one of the celebrated honorees who donates performances to help fundraise.
Mac’s desperate portrayal of the artist at the center of “Prosperous Fools” only sharpens its skewering of wealthy philanthropists who take more than they give away. When the artist cries “But why couldn’t I have a good oligarch?” and bemoans that “I should have stayed in the artistic integrity of obscurity,” it feels like a case of art imitating life.
Mainstream success came last decade for Mac. “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017 and Mac’s Broadway debut play “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus” racked up seven Tony nominations in 2019.
“Prosperous Fools,” however, was written 12 years ago before much of the critical acclaim. Mac said “someone with power” commissioned a translation of French playwright Molière’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” which mocks a status-obsessed middle class social climber.
Mac isn’t surprised the original commissioner didn’t want the final product. Molière is hardly present. And the play essentially advocates for an end to the perpetuation of culture that only the affluent deem worthy of funding.
Mac is also unsurprised it took over a decade to land another interested producer. The initial 40-person ballet troupe had to be shrunk to a more affordable ensemble of four dancers. Plus, its style, in Mac’s judgment, is still rather “queer” for a “heteronormative” theater industry.
“And then the other reason is because I insult donors,” Mac said.
“I don’t think I insult donors,” Mac added. “I ask donors to consider. And the theater is entrenched in making sure their donors feel good about themselves — not that their donors are in collaboration with us for us all to get to a place of better consciousness.”
The show’s slapstick humor helps break down its fairly cerebral subject matter. In one of several moments of hilarity, the patron and his “philanthropoid” — the ballet’s artistic director, whose primary concern is securing donations — sway around the stage oinking like pigs. Mac’s artist delivers scathing and highbrow critiques while pretending to be “The Princess Bride” actor Wallace Shawn in a puppet costume. The gala’s other honoree — a star singer called the “patron saint of philanthropy” who wears a gown adorned with impoverished children’s faces — makes no bones about her lust for Shawn.
But, as Mac knows, nonstop humor can have the effect of softening its target. “Prosperous Fools” foregoes the actors’ bows that typically end a play in favor of an epilogue, delivered by the artist in rhyming couplets, that serves as the show’s final blow to “philanthrocapitalism.”
“I want to be a tender heart in this too tough world trying to figure out how to maintain my tenderness and how to create revolution with tenderness. And I’m at a loss for it right now,” Mac said. “Part of what the play is doing is saying, ‘I’m at a loss. Are you? Do you have a solution for me?’”
By skipping the curtain call, Mac practically demands that the crowd wrestle immediately with whether charity absolves wealth hoarders’ greed — a question boldly put forth at the close of a Theatre for a New Audience season sponsored by Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
But whether the show’s heavy-handed message has reached those financial backers remains to be seen. “No one’s spoken to me,” Mac said. Neither responded to requests for comment.
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