Final 12 months’s lineup included 9 choices, reminiscent of “The Actual Black Swann: Confessions of America’s First Black Drag Queen” by Les Kurkendaal-Barrett. (All photographs by Sydney Lee Images)
Within the 5 years that he was capable of journey around the globe along with his performs A Southern Fairytale and At Start, actor and playwright Ty Autry was lucky sufficient to be a part of a number of performing arts fringe-like festivals. Now he hosts his personal right here in Atlanta: Lavender Fest, which opens subsequent week with 5 nights showcasing LGBTQ+ artists and performances. Season Two, titled Celebrating Each Letter, runs at Out Entrance Theatre Firm July 16 by way of July 20.
A couple of seasons in the past, Autry was on the inventive advisory board for Out Entrance Theatre Firm. One query that got here up was what the theater might add to programming if it had further assets. His suggestion was to begin a performing arts competition, particularly because the solely comparable one domestically is the Atlanta Fringe Pageant. From there, he and his crew started working, and Lavender Fest bowed efficiently final summer time. He’s been particularly enthusiastic about his viewers’s starvation and keenness for these productions, particularly the premieres.
This 12 months, the occasion is being staged by Autry’s nonprofit group, Qreative Voices, which began this winter and amplifies Southern queer storytelling by way of the performing arts.
Final 12 months’s competition had 9 choices and 2025 has 11. One spotlight of this season’s Lavender Fest is Yesterday is Lifeless, a one-person present by Atlanta’s Maria Chryssopoulos. In it, the playwright seems to be at Ellen Lois Frazar’s popping out (and unpublished) manuscript from the Twenties and the way it compares to her personal story — each the parallels and the disconnects.
It’s the primary play from Chryssopoulos, a current graduate of the College of Georgia. Initially, she wished to do extra of a chunk concerning the lifetime of Frazar, who was additionally a neighborhood activist in Athens. But, the extra the playwright tried to do analysis, the extra she discovered lifeless ends, so her trainer requested her to re-examine and re-evaluate the story. “Each time I thought of this, I used to be left with the sensation that I do know this story — however I didn’t stay it,” says Chryssopoulos.
Being staged at Lavender Fest, and in Atlanta, means so much to the playwright.
Different native parts embody One Morning At The Workplace by Vandy Beth Glenn, The Lily Present by Lily Kerrigan and two weekend cabarets — I Thought I’d Be Well-known By Now by David Cohn and We Love Ladies by Henry Marie Smith. The opening night time social gathering will probably be on the Atlanta Eagle.
Beneficial classes come in several waves for Autry as a competition director. This 12 months, his crew is tightening the schedule, taking 15-minute breaks between reveals relatively than 30. “We’re packing it in a bit extra so that folks don’t need to be on the theater as lengthy to see as many reveals,” says Autry.
The rainbow facet, as he calls it, of what he presents is important. “I wish to try to hit as many classes as doable within the stunning alphabet we now have in our queer nomenclature.” It was essential, as properly, to be sure that no less than half of the reveals are Southern based mostly or by a Southern artistic. This 12 months, Autry is happy that all the choices meet that standards.
Autry seems to be at his submissions course of by way of a advertising viewpoint, wanting a collaboration between the competition and the artists. “I don’t have a look at the script in any respect,” he says. “I wish to know if these artists can speak about their present and pitch them so we will have a partnership in growing a season collectively. In the event that they do, I’ve confidence the script and manufacturing values will observe.”
Autry graduated from Georgia Tech with a level in electrical engineering and turned down a profitable job to pursue performing. After working as an apprentice at Georgia Ensemble Theatre, he moved to New York and discovered how you can be an all-around artist. It was there he found playwriting and self-produced A Southern Fairytale. That initiative led to a different tour after which relocating again in Atlanta. “Younger actor me by no means thought I might be sitting as a competition director beginning my very own nonprofit. My coronary heart has at all times been in telling tales.”
Included on this 12 months’s Lavender Fest will probably be a staged studying of Autry’s personal play, Conversations on The best way to Get Your Mother Laid, which explores sexuality and is loosely autobiographical. “It’s precisely what it feels like,” he says. Within the play, his mom is a straight-laced Southerner who finds out about her son’s open way of life, pushing her to discover her personal sexual wants as a single lady.
Autry feels it’s critical that audiences perceive that artwork is resistance and desires individuals to seek out pleasure within the genuine materials.
“I like that this competition gives artists of a number of generations [the chance] to inform their tales, tales that matter to them. This can be a second to see your self onstage and an enormous vary of different individuals’s narratives and experiences you don’t get every day.”
The place & When
Lavender Fest is at Out Entrance Theatre Firm July 15 by way of July 20. Ticket packages range.
999 Brady Ave.NW.
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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 Nationwide Arts and Leisure Journalism Award for Finest Theatre Function and a nominee for On-line Journalist of the 12 months. A member of 5 nationwide critics’ organizations, he covers theater and movie for ArtsATL. A graduate of the College of Georgia, he has written concerning the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the competition director of Out on Movie, Atlanta’s LGBTQ movie competition, and lives in Avondale Estates along with his husband, Craig.