Taylor Mac Speaks at CalArts 2026 Graduation

Why It Matters

The speech reframes success for new creatives, offering actionable guidance on agency, risk-taking, and sustained curiosity that can shape career trajectories and challenge institutional gatekeeping in the arts. Its themes resonate beyond the arts, urging professionals to create their own opportunities and value engagement over approval.

Summary

At CalArts' 2026 graduation, performer and playwright Taylor Mac delivered a candid commencement address blending personal anecdotes of failures and triumphs with practical counsel for emerging artists. Mac urged graduates not to wait for permission or credentials to create opportunities, to prioritize curiosity over opinion, and to resist perfectionism in favor of virtuosic experimentation. They emphasized embracing hybridity, allowing goals to change, and 'winning by losing'—cultivating generosity and engagement rather than domination. Throughout, Mac framed artistic life as a practice of seeing, resilience, and self-authorship amid institutional and societal pressures.

Original Description

Taylor Mac, the acclaimed performance artist, playwright, and MacArthur Foundation Fellow, delivered the 2026 Commencement address at CalArts.

The CalArts Class of 2026 heard something rare from Taylor Mac: An honest account of what a creative life actually costs and what it actually gives. Not the polished bio. The other version. Mac named the embarrassments and the solitude alongside the triumphs, and in doing so, freed the graduates from the exhausting chase for perfection and permission. The goal, Mac suggested, is not to dominate or be validated. It is to wonder. And that requires nothing more than showing up curious.

Mac was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award nominee for Best Play. Mac’s work has also been recognized with numerous honors, including the International Ibsen Award, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Kennedy Prize.

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