Taylor Mac’s obsession with Herman Melville’s gay love affair & time-traveling with Virginia Woolf

Taylor Mac in “Orlando.” Photo by Joan Marcus.

Taylor Mac is many things. Fearless comes to mind, but that’s only what the audience may see when the work finally shines under the spotlight. Relentlessly inquisitive might be a more accurate description of the multi-hyphenate artist.

A new stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando: A Biography by Sarah Ruhl puts Mac at the center of a century-spanning tale of love, desire, and discovery. Upon the novel’s 90th anniversary in 2018, journalist Joanna Scutts described the author as making “a joyful case for the transgression of all limits on desire, curiosity, and knowledge.” 

Woolf’s book was, in many ways, a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, with whom she had an affair. Mac’s performance in

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