Holiday Sauce

EN Christmas as calamity – Ibsen Award winner, MacArthur Fellow, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Taylor Mac takes on the holidays to celebrate the season in all of its dysfunction. For its European premiere and part of the launch of the Théâtres de la Ville's generations of love season, Taylor Mac and his longtime collaborators, designer Machine Dazzle and music director Matt Ray have been commissioned to reimagine Holiday Sauce for the Théâtre des Capucins. They are joined by special friends to reframe the songs you love and the holidays you hate. A drag extravaganza, cabaret, and communal ritual rolled into one, Holiday Sauce pairs reworked carols with pop anthems, sharp monologue and riotous visual invention. But beneath the glitter and fantastically camp costumes lies a serious proposition, that collective singing, shared irreverence, and self-fashioned kinship can offer real sustenance.

Taylor Mac reminds us of the collective power of our chosen families, a message that rings true in spite of capitalism’s attempt to hijack the holidays. Surrounded by long-time collaborators and invited guests, Mac orchestrates an unruly mix of music, burlesque and spoken word, punctuated by “random acts of fabulousness”. The audience is invited to become part of this temporary community, shaped as much by dissent as by celebration.

In Holiday Sauce, a “performing arts concert” as Mac calls it, creativity becomes a form of secular spirituality and a site of care and resistance. It honours those who nurture artistic and queer communities whilst celebrating the winter solstice’s oldest truth: when daylight diminishes, connection sustains us.