Philadelphia has been without a theater festival celebrating gay talent and audiences ever since the annual Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival, which took place from 2003-09, closed shop. Hopefully that is about to change as Quince Productions, which has produced a successful string of gay- and lesbian-themed plays in recent years, launches GayFest!, Philadelphia’s newest gay and lesbian theater festival, running through Aug. 28.
For its inaugural series, GayFest! is featuring four shows that run the gamut from gay teen drama to retro sci-fi drag, and gives the opportunity for up-and-coming writers and performers of gay and lesbian plays to get their productions onto the stage.
Waving the flag for outrageous fun is “Devil Boys From Beyond.” Actor Thomas-Robert Irvin describes the show as an homage to midnight movies of days past.
“It’s a really, funny campy show,” he said. “It spoofs the ’50s sci-fi genre and the grand dames of the screen of that era. It’s very silly and very campy, but it has some important messages, too. It deals with gay marriage. I really think that this is something that the audience will have a good time watching. It’s just a lot of fun and it’s going to be very crowd-pleasing. This is the only show of its genre that’s represented at the festival this year. This is the only time you’re going to see drag queens on the festival or a spoof of this nature.”
Irvin added that he is thoroughly enjoying the bad girl in this show.
“I play Lucinda Marsh,” he said. “She is a star reporter that has seen better days. To me, she is everything I loved about female screen villainesses of the past. She’s a little bit of Cruella DeVille and a little bit of Mommy Dearest. She is deliciously diabolical and just a lot of fun to play.”
Another production promising campy action-packed thrills is “The Beebo Brinker Chronicles,” starring Amanda Grove in the titular role.
“Although the play was written not that long ago, it’s based off of lesbian pulp fiction from the ’50s and ’60s,” Grove said. “There were these series of lesbian pulp-fiction books and this play is adapted from that.”
Grove said that while the play is inspired by the series of novels it’s named after, it is not entirely faithful to the stories established in those books.
“We’re not relying on it and we’re not trying to copy it,” she said. “We’re hoping to introduce the series to people who may not have heard of it before to spark interest in that literature from that time period. We’re really just focusing on making it our own and bringing something new to it. There may be some disappointment among the die-hard fans but we’re really just focusing on our own informed interpretations and our creativity to make it new and exciting, and fit it with GayFest.”
Grove added she likes the challenge of playing a character as complex as Brinker.
“She is a common-thread character. She’s butch and she’s kind of been through it all. She’s in the Village scene. She’s the jaded bitter centerpiece of the Village at that time. She’s a player and a womanizer looking for love, and she hopes to teach the newly outed lesbian young’uns how the game works and how it goes. The play itself as well as the novels are quite campy. She’s the mean power force but tough-love kind of character.”
Grove said there’s a message in all the camp elements of the play.
“The interesting thing about the play itself is that even though it plays on the camp aspects of the pulp-fiction novels and the era, it also really nicely addresses the timeliness of the subject matter. It’s definitely a comedy and campy, but it does pull out the relevance of these women’s stories about the plight of needing a man. It questions ideas about marriage, whether it be heterosexual marriage or lesbian marriage or a gay man and a lesbian woman marrying each other just so that they can have companionship. It also addresses suicides, being ostracized from society and the plight of transgendered characters. So it’s funny and it’s camp but it pulls out extremely relevant issues. This play could easily be done or misconstrued as pure camp, but it was done in New York and it was well-received. The 50-50 combination has pure camp but also touching characters and moving issues as well.”
By now you’re probably wondering if the festival has a thick and pervasive streak of camp running through it. Rich Rubin, producing artistic director of Quince Productions, is aware it might appear that way — but it isn’t intentional.
“That is sort of a coincidence,” he said. “While the two have a camp element, their version of camp is different. The four plays are a really diverse selection in subject matter. The goal, rather than being stylistically consistent, was to revel in how inconsistent they are and show the diversity of gay and lesbian theater that’s out there.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum of GayFest! is “The Last Sunday in June,” a dramedy that has graced several stages in New York City over the last few years.
“In the play, the Gay Pride Parade is outside the window and as the play goes on, different friends drop by over the course of the day,” actor Jonathan Steadman said. “By the time the play ends, the parade is over and no one has made it out to enjoy the festivities. And they learn about themselves and gay pride and they laugh and they cry.”
Steadman plays Glen, an HIV-positive writer.
“Glen is in his earlier years,” Steadman said. “He was kind of the belle of the ball. He’s cynical and that comes from a need of some sort that he has. He’s funny, he’s blunt and he really enjoys being around his friends.”
When asked why an event like GayFest! is important to the LGBT actors and playwrights, Steadman pointed to a particular piece of dialog from his production.
“There’s a line in the play I’m paraphrasing,” he said. “One of the characters says, ‘Gay plays used to be the only way we could see ourselves.’ And my character says, ‘Now we’re must-see TV, so get over it.’ I don’t necessarily agree with that. We’re ‘must-see TV’ but they show gay people outwardly. They don’t show that they have loving relationships. They just show them as switching, snapping their fingers and making draperies. I think events like GayFest! are vital to the community. Theater is supposed to illuminate the human condition for better and for worse. I think the LGBT community is part of that human condition.”
The fourth play, “Slipping” by playwright Daniel Talbott, focuses on the loves, hopes, disappointments and anguishes of gay teens. Named one of the top 10 plays of the year by The Advocate, it also was a 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Drama finalist.
With any luck, Quince Productions and GayFest will continue to illuminate the human condition and LGBT stories next year. Rubin said there was an immense interest from gay and lesbian playwrights for this year’s festival and he has a wealth of diverse plays to choose from if and when Quince decides to do another GayFest!
“I have a stack of plays 2-feet high and I’ve just started reading them,” he said. “I think that will change if we hopefully do the GayFest! again next year because I’m already getting people contacting Quince saying I’d really be interested in having this play considered for next year’s fest.”
Quince Productions presents GayFest!, through Aug. 28 at Shubin Theatre, 407 Bainbridge St. For more information, tickets and schedule of performances, visit www.quinceproductions.com or call 215-627-1088.