INTERVIEW: Queerly Festival returns to celebrate Pride in NYC
Photo: The Queerly Festival will present Driver’s Seat, a one-act play. Photo courtesy of Carina Allen / Provided by Emily Owens PR with permission.
The eighth-annual Queerly Festival has returned to New York City to celebrate Pride Month. Presented by FRIGID New York, the festival champions the work of LGBTQ+ artists, both on stage and behind the scenes, according to press notes. Jimmy Lovett serves as the curator of the 2022 edition.
There are many highlights to the programming, which kicked off this week and continues through Sunday, July 3. Offerings include As Sylvia, Jackson Sturkey and the Big Turn On, Josiah and Spektorology. There are musicals, plays, solo shows, comedy acts, drag and concerts, among other options. Performances take place at the Kraine Theater, and they can also be streamed online.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Lovett about the Queerly Festival. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
If an audience member is new to the Queerly Festival, what can they expect this year?
This year, Queerly is back in a big way! In 2020, we were all virtual, and in 2021 we had a very small (but mighty!) lineup. This time around, we have 17 shows with an amazing variety of performances and performers. We have music, drag, burlesque, comedy, improv and even some actual plays! I’d say there’s something for everyone in the LGBQTAI+ community and for our friends and allies.
Is there a highlight that you don’t want people to miss?
There isn’t a piece in the festival that I’m not excited for, which I know is a cop out answer, but some of them are performers I’ve never gotten to see before. That said, I love Jackson Sturkey’s music, and As You Will always makes me laugh annoyingly loudly. I also want to shout out Josiah, which is coming to us all the way from Canada and performing on Juneteenth. I mean, I want to shout out all of them, but I’ll control myself.
How important is it for the arts to celebrate Pride month (and Pride throughout the year)?
Queer culture and the arts have heavily overlapped for a long time, especially in the New York theatre and arts scene. The arts have provided an avenue for queer people to express themselves for generations, even when that expression had to be coded or metaphorical. Theatre is a space where it’s more socially acceptable to explore identity and emotion, and theatre in the Village in particular provided a sanctuary for countless queer people over the years.
Celebration of queerness in theatre is also meaningful to me personally. As a queer person I have met so many other queer people through my work in the theatre. It’s a place where I’ve made friends and found community. The Queerly Festival gets to help other queer artists find that community as well.
Honestly I’m not sure where Pride would be without the arts. The clothes and costumes, the parade floats and the music, the dancing and the drag shows — all of these are art. Even banners and signs held high in protest of the treatment of LGBTQAI+ people are a kind of art. Art is how we express ourselves and how we share our stories, and queer representation matters. This is true on Broadway with shows like A Strange Loop and Take Me Out, on TV with shows like Our Flag Means Death (one of my favorites), and here at FRIGID New York with the Queerly Festival.
How did you select the pieces that will be performed this year?
We got to this lineup through a bit of a mishmash. Some of the artists are folks we’ve worked with before, like Ellie Brelis of Driver’s Seat, who absolutely killed it at the FRIGID Festival back in February. Others are Queerly alums, like Jackson Sturkey, Quinten Lamar of Messy Show and the Thank You for Coming Out team. Some are artists I’d seen in other venues and wanted to bring into our community, and some are friends of friends or friends of artists we know or like. My goal was to create a diverse lineup both in terms of artists and types of performances, and I think there’s something here for everyone!
Can the streaming option match the experience of being in the theater live?
For me, no. Nothing is like being in the room with the performers and feeling that exchange of energy. However, I do think it’s really important. It allows more folks to support the theatre [and] our artists, and experience the shows. I’m very proud that we at FRIGID are still offering streaming options even as the city continues to open up.
Unfortunately, neither of our spaces are wheelchair accessible, so live streaming not only allows us to reach an audience outside of New York, but also lets us extend our community to folks who aren’t able to physically join us for whatever reason. As someone who grew up far from New York, the inaccessibility of big-budget (or sometimes any budget) theatre is something I’ve been aware of for a long time. I think being able to share our work with folks around the world on sliding scale ticket pricing is incredibly valuable — especially with Queerly. We want to make sure everyone is welcome, even those who aren’t able to make it to our spaces. The idea that queer people living in unwelcoming communities might be able to derive some comfort from our work here really means the world to me.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Queerly Festival, presented by FRIGID New York, continues through Sunday, July 3 at the Kraine Theater in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
