Mixed Mess@ge is a loose collective of artists, headed by Mike Taylor, who favor the phenomenological approach and make theater, video, multi-media shows and installations. In its next show at La MaMa, NOT DEAD YET,there is a Faith Based Initiatives Group which is a secret unilateral autonomous military commission. Its weapons are an explosive combination of the innocence of youth, the mystic cowboy code, and a new kind of compassion. Can we win our war armed solely with achingly beautiful lies? Stay tuned.

The play takes us, with singing, dancing and multimeda, into a military camp where movie cowboys are trained to deploy the newest weapons in our arsenal: the weapon of faith, the weapon of innocence, the weapon of sexual innuendy and the weapon of logical fallacy. These are combined with other secret ingredients into our biggest new weapon: the compassion bomb.

The piece is conceived and directed by Mike Taylor in collaboration with the cast: Michael Floyd Hardy, Jennifer Howard, Ryuji Noda, Gregor Paslawsky, Eric Ramey, Peter Sciscioli, Valerie Stanford, Tony Stinkmetal, Lora Marie Williams, and and Mike Stumm and Ralph Martin on video. Design Collaborators are Peter Wareing (video design), Tim Schellenbaum (sound design) and Patricia Hoffbauer (additional choreography).

In 2000 at La MaMa, Mixed Mess@ge performed the "The Sadness of Others, a Situation Comedy. Written and directed by Mike Taylor, it was a multimedia show in which a man on TV offers five disaffected New Yorkers a chance to escape their lives of self-induced anxiety by returning with him to an alternate dimension. It was the kind of show that asks the question, "Are personal messages from your television set a schizophrenic fantasy, a marketing ploy, or merely a ticket home?" As in "Not Dead Yet," the playscript was developed by Taylor from company improvisations

Mike Taylor directs, designs and produces theater and video. Her company, mixed mess@ge, functions as an artists' collective and production company. Its first project, "Bad Science" (DTW's Raw Space, May 1999), was an installation of 27 interactive pieces by 23 sculptors, writers, videographers, musicians, designers and photographers. Taylor was co-artistic director of 3-Legged Dog from 1994-1998. Her last show with that company, "If I Were You," opened the Fall '98 season at The Kitchen. The company's webite is www.mixedmsg.com