Besides the sight of unruly children forced back into the iron physical and psychological grip of the educational system where they will remain tethered for the next eight months, the only thing in September that we are even happier to see is the return of Philly Fringe/Live Arts Festival. The annual event is a 15-day smorgasbord of new and cutting-edge culture ranging from a wide variety of performance to art exhibitions to music. Naturally, there is a wealth of LGBT talent and entertainment to be found (and hopefully supported) throughout the festival.
The inaugural Gender Reel Festival, an annual event promoting the visibility of gender-nonconforming, gender-variant and transgender arts and artists, is making its debut at this year’s Fringe Festival, Sept. 9-10 at CBS Auditorium, Dorrance Hamilton Hall, 320 S. Broad St., followed by a performance by trans activist Kit Yan at the festival’s after-party 11 p.m. Sept. 10 at Tabu Lounge, 200 S. 12th St.
“The original intention was for it to be an independent festival, and it is still is,” said Gender Reel organizer Joe Ippolito. “Being involved with Fringe ended up being more a secondary plan. We decided to become a program on Fringe because we wanted to get the festival exposed to a wider audience. This was our first year to try and do that. We have a lot of support from a number of other entities as well.”
Ippolito said that while the festival is for gender-nonconforming and transgender artists and images, it’s open to any artist or performer dealing with that subject matter.
“You don’t have to be a trans or gender-variant artist to submit to the film festival as long as your work is in one of those themes,” Ippolito said. “We look for two things: the art itself being reflective of those themes and anything that is reflective of challenging the binary gender system. For example, we have film about effeminate gay men within the male culture, and we have another film about butch lesbians. So it’s not all just transgender, but there are a lot of films on the gender-variant and transgender experience.”
Ippolito added that the festival is attracting interest from outside of the LGBT community.
“Certainly there’s a lot of LGBT people who are interested in attending, but we’ve also received support from other people who aren’t a part of those specific communities as well. The Fringe involvement will broaden it even more so. One of the things we really want to do is attract all kinds of people to this festival because we want to show that this is an important expression of this work, and this issue is an important one. Anyone who is generally interested in art and independent film might be interested in attending this festival even if they are not part of the LGBT community, and we will certainly welcome anyone who would want to attend the festival.”
Philly Fringe has a number of gay-themed theatrics this year.
One of the more eye-catching titles this year is the Tribe of Fools production, “Heavy Metal Dance Fag,” the story of Timmy, a blue collar, Philly dockworker with a secret passion for tap dancing to 1980s hair metal, Sept. 2-11 at St. Stephen’s Theater, 923 Ludlow St.
Yeah, we thought “Billy Elliott” meets “Rock of Ages” too, which we admit sounds better than the sum of its parts.
Terry Brennan, who plays Timmy, said any similarity to the two plays is purely coincidental.
“We have been doing this as a cabaret for a couple of years, and it kind of lined up that way,” he said. “When I saw ‘Rock of Ages,’ I thought wow, this is timely. So there’s a lot of nostalgia in it for big ’80s rock.”
Brennan said that Timmy struggles to resolve what is expected of him with who he is inside.
“Timmy is a really rough around the edges character, and most of that is a façade,” Brennan said. “When you get down to it, he’s a sweet and sensitive soul. But where he lives and the people he lives with, he has to have a tough exterior. You really feel for the guy with everything he’s struggling to put together. Once you get past the hard exterior, you find out he’s very sensitive and soft. It really explores the ideas that we think we can peg somebody and tell who a person is by saying you’re straight, you must be this and you’re gay, you must be this. We essentially, whether we realize it or not, we’re always sizing people up fairly and unfairly by what your gender says you need to be. Everyone in the play actually has issues that come up, but Timmy is the one who isn’t sure. He’s questioning his whole identity, whether or not he’s straight.”
Brennan added that while this production is a comedy, there are some sobering moments to be found in it.
“It’s very funny and ridiculous. But it shifts between being really funny and awkward,” he said. “We take a lot of these comic moments and notions and stretch them to the point where it’s sort of stops being funny for a while. Usually then we launch into a new scene. It’s a dichotomy of things we laugh at, but when you give it some time and think about it, you ask why you’re laughing at it. It’s kind of painful.”
Pain and levity also go hand in hand in Diversions Productions’ “TASK,” which is described as a racy mash-up of “Lord of the Flies” and “Peanuts,” running Sept. 9-17 at Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Ave.
“It’s about a group of eight friends who you meet when they are 14, and you leave them at the end of the play when they are just graduating college,” said Dave Ebersole, the show’s playwright and director. “So there’s a lot of coming-of-age stuff that’s really funny — doing drugs for the first time, having sex for the first time. A lot them tend not the make the greatest choices in the world. One of the characters is gay and has a thing for the lead, who also is not 100-percent sure of his sexuality and figures it out, and he figures out that he’s straight.”
Ebersole said the play is inspired by his experiences growing up.
“My big inspiration was when I graduated college I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I felt like everybody had a goal and purpose, and I had a college degree and no idea what to do with it.”
Also mining childhood memories for inspiration is out choreographer Kyle Abraham for his production, “The Radio Show,” Sept. 16-17 at Zellerbach Theatre, 3680 Walnut St.
Abraham had fond memories growing up listening to Pittsburgh radio station Hot 106.7 FM WAMO and its sister station AM 860. In 2009, WAMO, the only black urban radio station still in Pittsburgh, went off-air.
“It’s inspired by my father, who has Alzheimer’s, [and] my family who dealt with it,” Abraham said about his show. “When [WAMO] went off the air, it was the loss of a voice in the community. There was no way for the urban audience to voice their opinions and hear things pertaining to their community. But I didn’t want it to be depressing, so I thought up a show as an abstract narrative involving the songs and my family’s trips from Pittsburgh to Detroit in the summer to visit relatives.”
Conveying the significance of earthbound radio stations to a generation that has become accustomed to having every song they have ever liked at their fingertips can be tough, but Abraham said he is up for the challenge.
“People are like, ‘How did you hear new music?’ The radio. I’m baffled by a generation that grew up without the radio. In my mind, people are still having some kind of access to that. We’ve performed the work in other countries where some of the music wasn’t very popular, but I think the show still resonates with people.”
Other Fringe shows that should not be missed include “Coriolanus,” a Shakespeare tragedy with homosexual themes and directed by out performer Lee Hunter, Sept. 2, 4, 9 and 17 at Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Ave.
Also, one of the longest-running Fringe shows in Tel Aviv, “Smiley,” is set in a New Age empowerment workshop and consists of a series of sexually charged monologues where the characters, one of whom is gay, interacts with the audience, Sept. 4-7 at Media Bureau, 725 N. Fourth St.
For information on all the shows and exhibitions on Philly Fringe/Live Arts or to purchase tickets, visit www.livearts-fringe.org.