Performance troupe to stage kiss fest on Plaza

Event deemed 'Critical Mack' gives locals chance to participate in mass make-out session

Dennis J. Carroll | For The New Mexican

7/4/2008 - 7/5/08

If you're anywhere near the Plaza about 1 p.m. Sunday, be prepared to pucker up. There's a fairly good chance you'll get "macked," as in kissed.

A Santa Fe performance-art troupe, Meow Wolf, plans to stage a Critical Mack kissing happening sort of thing in front of the bandstand to demonstrate, well, nothing really. "We're doing this for the sake of doing it," according to Meow Wolf manager Vince Kadlubek.

Mack, meaning "kiss," has been sneaking into the mainstream fairly recently from the outskirts of the college crowd, much of it probably unaware of the term's origin in the French maquereau, meaning "pimp," according to a Random House Web site. From there, it seems to have taken on a definition of the sweet talk a pimp uses with prostitutes, and then sweet-talk, or flirting, in general, and now the kind of interpersonal connection that such sweet-talk often leads to.

Kadlubek mentioned the planned event had something to do with creating "a magical and lovely moment on the Plaza" and with "reminding tourists that they are outsiders" (though they probably will be allowed to kiss anyway).

The plan is for anyone interested in a group mack to bring along someone they wouldn't mind macking with for a few minutes.

Kadlubek said at the stroke of 1 o'clock, a "love gnome" will waddle onto the stage and blow the love horn, signaling it's time for those present to kiss.

He said there hasn't been a lot of publicity about the event other than by word of mouth, so to speak, so he wasn't sure how many kissers might show up. It could be 10 or so couples, Kadlubek said, or maybe thousands.

Nearly 20 people showed up for a less affectionate Meow Wolf event on the Plaza on June 1. Participants came as superheroes and showed off their make-believe superpowers in what Meow Wolf called a Monster Battle that lasted about two hours.

Kadlubek said the kissing event probably won't last that long, maybe five minutes tops. But once that kind of thing gets going, who knows if the participants just might lose track of time?