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Reviews
NyBlade.com A summer full of queer performances
Queerfestsnyc the nation’s largest gay theater festival
By Gerard Robinson Friday, June 11, 2004
If it’s action on the gay boards you’re looking for this summer, you’ll find an embarrassment of riches at QueerFestsNYC, the largest gay and lesbian theater arts festival in the country, running from mid-June through July.
Three theater groups in New York City have combined under one umbrella to present over 60 gay-themed plays, performance pieces, dance, cabaret, puppetry, drag, circus acts and more. The shows feature more than 300 artists.
The companies are Queer@Here Arts Center; the Hot! Festival at Dixon Place; and the Fresh Fruit Festival. The three festivals retain their autonomy and are responsible for their own programming.
Why did the three troupes decide to collaborate? “Apart, we were operating in a vacuum,” says Fresh Fruit Artistic Director Carol Polcovar. “Capitalism keeps artists separate and competitive whereas we want to be inclusive.”
The Fresh Fruit Festival, which presents works from around the country aspires to become international. Polcovar sees gay and lesbian culture as a way to reach out to tourism boards and bring people to New York City.
“Our mission is to counter perceptions and misunderstandings about lesbian and gay culture as marginalized,” Polcovar of Fresh Fruit added. “When you consider artists like Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, Tennessee Williams and others, we’re not at the edge of things; we’re at the center.”
Fresh Fruit
The Fresh Fruit Festival, also in July, kicks off with “Tangy, Tasty, Fruity Tunes,” an evening of Queer Music, curated by Justin Trantor who will also perform a solo piece with dance, eclectic music and freeform spoken word. Other events include “Cucumber Dreams,” by Michael Cross Burke, which is about sex, gay monkeys and cucumbers; and “Fast Girls, Goddesses and Kumquats, an evening of women’s poetry.
Also sure to please the palate is “Oranges Just Want to be Pears: Plays and Song About Gender.” Among them are “Butch2Butch: Bois in Love” by Aleada Minton, a short play about two butch lesbians who find themselves attracted to one another; and “Tea and Tourniquets,” a monologue by Keith Angora who ruminates on whether a male actor can play a woman’s role despite being bearded, short and old. The role in question? Laura Reynolds, the sympathetic older woman from “Tea and Sympathy.”
Baron will give you at-ti-tude at the ‘Homo Hip-Hop Poetry Jam.
Victoria Libertore will perform a solo work about weight entitled “Daring and Divine,” during which she performs a striptease.
Finally, Kevin Brofsky will present “Albee Damned,” a takeoff on Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “The Goat,” with the genders of the couples mixed up.
Michael Cross Burke will show you some interesting new uses of cucumbers. Or, maybe not so new.
Fresh Fruit Festival 2004
RESPONSES FROM THE ARTISTS
Beth Smulyan, performance artist (excerpt from blog)
I’m proud of the performing I did this summer -- especially at Fresh Fruit. Most of those people have never seen anything like what I do, so its pretty different, but I feel appreciated and have had great feedback. They were shocked but liked watching me perform. There was a "talk," a buzz about me that made me shy and excited. It was awesome to get to know the other performers, to hear the dressing room banter of 5 gay men doing a short play, a burlesque dancer and myself. They were sweet and fun and comforting. Sometimes I forget that what I say on stage can actually impact people in a big way.
Jade Esteban Estrada, producer, director, dancer, singer, choreographer
It's wonderful to grow with another artist. You are such a leader in the community!
Ephraim R. Avanzado, filmmaker (Phillipines)
You and the festival are truly a blessing for artists like us. Thank you so much and more power to the Festival.
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