Joy and the Pandemic

by Taylor Mac

Joy and the Pandemic is my way of understanding how I grew up.

Playwright Taylor Mac’s mom, Joy, has passed. In the second half of Joy and the Pandemic the play’s namesake is on a bed onstage passing away as we watch her daughter and a former student process their own lives. The city, time and characters are different, but you get the sense that distance makes it easier to be even more truthful about this parent-child history.

I am not going to read the Wikipedia page on Taylor Mac. Did Taylor Mac grow up Christian Scientist like the main characters in this show? I would rather not know. The religion, or lack thereof, of the characters, the time period and the city all seemed to me a well chosen context for a timely discussion of real life versus values:

I grew up in America dealing with…this kind of insertion into the culture that belief is more important than reality. 

Those two quotes are from an interview with Mac that I stumbled upon when I went looking for the rights or a copy of t…