Support LGBTQI+ theatre: OUTwright
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In 2011, Portland, OR based Fuse Theatre Ensemble produced the Gay Pride Reading Series. After immense popular demand, Fuse reinvented it in 2013 as the much more ambitious OUTwright Theatre Festival. The mission of this Pacific Northwest festival is to celebrate the contributions of the LGBTQI+ community to the art of theatre by reading, staging, and developing both original and classic works while creating an incubator for new LGBTQI+ works, artists and audiences. Along with reconnecting us with classic LGBTQI+ texts, OUTwright has paved the way for numerous scripts to receive fully staged productions at theatres across the world. In 2016, OUTwright's production of Under the Influence, by Ernie Lijoi, won the Portland Area Theatre Alliance Drammy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Actor. 2015’s workshop of How to be a Sissy, by Brian Haimbach, has been selected to perform at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And 2014’s Animals Commit Suicide, by festival favorite J. Julian Christopher, has received full productions in NYC and Chicago.
The 2017 OUTwright Theatre Festival will present a fully staged production of the comedy Sordid Lives by Del Shores as well as a revival of How to be a Sissy before it heads to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We will also be reading original works by Portland playwrights Rusty Tennant and Jane Comer, and NYC playwright J. Julian Christopher. And, as always, The Original Practice Shakespeare Festival will be with us again staging a play from one of the most gender-bent queer playwrights of all time, Shakespeare.
OUTwright holds firm the belief that there is no greater canon of the LGBTQI+ civil rights experience than the theatre. Our hope is to educate future generations on the struggles and successes of our predecessors by sharing these stories, both new and old, while also engaging our audiences in numerous outreach programs by providing workshops, panel discussions, and artistic opportunities.
Our five-year anniversary festival’s feature production of Sordid Lives takes us back to a point in our history when gay conversion therapy was considered a justifiable response to homosexuality by much of America. As we head into Trump and Pence’s America, this story is as timely as ever. In this sidesplitting comedy, the audience endures Brother Boy’s detention in a mental health facility, his impassioned battles with psychiatrists and family members, and his eventual and triumphant escape at the hands of the only man he has ever truly loved. Del Shores beautifully renders this nuanced discussion with just the right amount of sugar to make the medicine go down.
The 2017 OUTwright Theatre Festival will present a fully staged production of the comedy Sordid Lives by Del Shores as well as a revival of How to be a Sissy before it heads to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We will also be reading original works by Portland playwrights Rusty Tennant and Jane Comer, and NYC playwright J. Julian Christopher. And, as always, The Original Practice Shakespeare Festival will be with us again staging a play from one of the most gender-bent queer playwrights of all time, Shakespeare.
OUTwright holds firm the belief that there is no greater canon of the LGBTQI+ civil rights experience than the theatre. Our hope is to educate future generations on the struggles and successes of our predecessors by sharing these stories, both new and old, while also engaging our audiences in numerous outreach programs by providing workshops, panel discussions, and artistic opportunities.
Our five-year anniversary festival’s feature production of Sordid Lives takes us back to a point in our history when gay conversion therapy was considered a justifiable response to homosexuality by much of America. As we head into Trump and Pence’s America, this story is as timely as ever. In this sidesplitting comedy, the audience endures Brother Boy’s detention in a mental health facility, his impassioned battles with psychiatrists and family members, and his eventual and triumphant escape at the hands of the only man he has ever truly loved. Del Shores beautifully renders this nuanced discussion with just the right amount of sugar to make the medicine go down.
Organizer
Rusty Newton Tennant
Organizer
Portland, OR
Fuse Theatre Ensemble
Beneficiary