I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s a moment in the second act of Hir that’s unforgettable. It’s about 30 seconds long, it involves a baseball bat and a very strong swing, and it’s noisy as fuck. It is, as they say, theater magic.
Those 30 seconds alone are worth the price of admission. They even make up for a bewildering first act that, if you aren’t aware of what’s coming, could cause you to leave the theater. (I left at intermission, stupidly, the first time I saw Hir in Minneapolis in 2015.) Stay for the second act, or stay because you feel particularly invested in stories about the American middle class, or stay because Hir playwright Taylor Mac is a certified (MacArthur grant–winning) genius.
“The great American middle class is not that great,” Mac memorably said in a manifesto a few years back. Mac’s gender pronoun is “judy,” and if you’re confused by that, don’t worry—that’s kind of the point. (Yes, it’s probably a reference to Judy Garland, or “good judy,” a term for a gay man who is also your good friend.) In judy’s opinion, the Greeks and Shakespeare “didn’t bother with the middle class because the middle class is boring.” So it’s a bit ironic that Mac, an artist known for making experimental cabaret-style productions, catapulted to genius status after writing Hir, a play about the middle class.
