Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music has won the 2017 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, presented by Columbia University and Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith. The prize will be presented to the artists at a ceremony in the spring.
“A vast, immersive, subversive, audacious and outrageous theatre experience, Mac’s and Ray’s piece employs a variety of performance techniques to illuminate and explode our country’s history as seen through the lens of its popular music,” said the jury in a statement. “This piece shows, in Mac’s words, how ‘in America, the oppressor is forgiven but the outsider is vilified.’”