Loretta Greco Still Has Magic to Do
TAYLOR MAC FIRST MET LORETTA GRECO A DECADE ago over breakfast. Greco, who became artistic director of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre in 2008, and departs the company in May, invited Mac to her place for a home-cooked breakfast. Mac remembers the meeting as “an epic hang,” and says that Greco later told judy (Mac’s gender pronoun) that she knew she’d produce judy’s play when judy ate all her food. In her third season with Magic, Greco did produce Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge: A Flowergory Manifold, a five-hour play with 36 cast members and plenty of glitter, about a lily’s fight against nostalgia, among other things.-
“She was the first artistic director to produce me full-out without asking me to raise the money,” says Mac. “It was a brave choice, and she’s continually made brave choices through her tenure.”
Greco’s 12-year run at Magic Theatre can be marked by the many relationships she’s built with playwrights. Mac feels lucky knowing that the support comes from the same company that nurtured Sam Shepard,, , and the Pulitzer-winning . Several years after , Greco produced the world premiere of Mac’s , a family drama about identity and gender, which judy wrote in response to Shepard’s .
