By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Taylore Mahogany Scott (Michael Keating photo)

On a sleety Sunday afternoon in January, Taylore Mahogany Scott is bundled in dark sweaters and curled into a booth at the Greenwich, a cozy jazz club tucked midway up Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills.

"I never liked bars," confesses Scott, one of the handful of top actresses based in Cincinnati. "Everyone standing around smoking and drinking.

"I'm allergic to smoke, I don't drink beer, it's too expensive to buy real liquor."

But here she is at a bar, empty of clientele at the moment, because Scott is the indefatigable emcee of a monthly "24-Hour Open Mic" at the Greenwich. The marathon (which is in two 12-hour slots) has officially begun, but the sky is gray and dripping freezing rain, and at the moment there are no performers and no audience.

Even so, "you have to take the opportunity," the Texas native says, with muscle in her tone. "If you wait for it to happen in Cincinnati, you're gonna wait your whole life."

'Just do it' attitude

WHERE TO SEE HER

You can catch Taylore Mahogany Scott at any of these performances. What: Everybody wanna be a... When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and March 2 Where: The Greenwich Jazz Club, 2440 Gilbert Ave., Walnut Hills Tickets: $7. 221-1151. • • •  What: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through March 14 Where: Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., downtown Tickets: $20 adults, $18 seniors, $16 students. 381-2273. • • •  What: 24-Hour Open Mic When: Part One starts 3 p.m. Saturday continuing to 3 a.m. Sunday; Part Two: noon to midnight Sunday Where: The Greenwich Jazz Club Tickets: $3. Contact Mark Yates at 751-2823 or e-mail upstairsart@yahoo.com to register to perform. (Limit 45 minutes, please.)

The marathon Open Mic was inspired by a pep talk by Michael Burnham, who teaches and directs at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music and is a mentor-about-town. "He said, 'If you have an idea, do it.' " So she did.

What she wants, she says, is for people to start coming, and for people to talk, and for word to get to city officials and get some investment into the Peebles Corner neighborhood.

"I'm awake and I'm alive," she laughs. "God gave me this work ethic and this conscience."

Scott doesn't know slacking. Marathon Sundays include morning services; starting the Open Mic at noon; dashing over to Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, where she's been a company member for two years, for a matinee performance; then heading back to the Greenwich to close down the marathon from 9 p.m. to midnight.

Greenwich co-owner Mark Yates looks at Scott and shakes his head. "She's got an extra battery."

Scott better carry a battery pack. She opens tonight in Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Tuesday night she debuts her first full-length performance piece, Everybody Wanna Be a..., fashioned from her performance poetry.

Everybody, she says, "is very much about the strength of a woman, and very much about the strength of a black woman."

"A lot of it is about looking at yourself. In this age, it's easy to put blame elsewhere. It's about where blame should really go."

Everybody was originally planned for off-nights at the Festival last fall, a follow-up to her critical triumph last year in the solo show The Gimmick by Dael Orlandersmith.

Scott says the show was part of the deal for her signing on with CSF for a second year. The Festival, which spent a lot of 2003 in turmoil, says it wishes she'd been more patient.

Scott, typically, went forward. When she takes matters into her own hands, she laughs, "be sore afraid."

Scott is nervous, even though she's been writing performance poetry for five years. "I'm not sure how people are going to support the work. Like any artist, if people say, 'What is this?!' I'm going to be crushed."

Looking beyond Cincinnati

The Festival artistic staff knows what it has in Scott. Rebecca Bowman, who directed The Gimmick and will direct her next month in Pericles says, "Mahogany is grounded. She brings this fantastic gravity to a stage. She radiates a certain kind of power."

Scott will likely be moving on from Cincinnati at the end of the season, although she's not sure where she'll land.

She's applied for several grad programs, and she has had a call from Orlando Shakespeare Festival in Florida.

Or she considers just returning to school, finishing her degree in veterinary medicine and paying off her debts.

But on this wet and icy afternoon, she's waiting for the performance to begin. A clown troupe is scheduled. She hopes it arrives while at the Shakespeare Festival. "I have this phobia about clowns. I am not ready to face my fear."

But of course she is.