MUSCLING IN The musical component of GayFest blends sex and history in A Kiss from Alexander starring Craig Ramsay

Gay story lines—from the boy-on-boy teen lust of Spring Awakening to the tortured closet case in The Little Dog Laughed and a lesbian mom’s neuroses in 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother—were all over mainstream theater stages this season. Still, it wasn’t enough for Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, champions of queer theater and producers of GayFest NYC, which runs now through June 2.

“You have this amazing pool of talent out there that cannot afford to produce their work, and we’re putting it out there,” says Batman. “In many ways, these playwrights don’t know where to even start to get their work seen. We’re filling a void by getting these shows onstage.”

While NYC has hosted numerous other gay theater festivals over the years—including Fresh Fruit (kicking off July 22 this year), Queer at HERE Arts Center, Hot! at Dixon Place and the Harris-produced Gay Pride Series—GayFest distinguishes itself in a couple of ways. First, unlike some others, GayFest puts up all its own money for the productions—and plans to donate a portion of it to the Harvey Milk High School for LGBT kids. Also, unlike most festival producers, Batman and Harris aim to continue working with the playwrights after the event has ended, in order to help them develop their work and achieve their shared goal: moving all of the plays on to other venues. 

“We have an agreement in writing that we have the rights to produce their work, so that we can develop these pieces further and give them a life beyond this festival,” Batman says, explaining that GayFest is a year-round, not-for-profit development company for LGBT playwrights and plays with gay subject matter. “GayFest will be our yearly showcase for the most ready plays, but we’ll option others throughout the year that you may not see, and also have readings.”

The festival’s lineup includes full Equity stagings of two plays and a musical—A Kiss from Alexander, which has Alexander the Great turning up in today’s East Village—plus two readings, all chosen from 175 submissions that came from as near as Manhattan and as far as Australia and New Zealand. Plays include Revolution, a dramatization of pre-Stonewall New York that uses historic newsreel footage, and Competing Narratives, about three men who deal with identity, race and various ways of passing. 

Though GayFest’s directors and playwrights are unknowns, its advisory board is an impressive who’s who of established gay theater folk—including Douglas Carter Beane, Charles Busch, Mario Cantone, Kate Clinton and Terrence McNally. “We know a lot of people and told them what we had in mind,” Batman says. “Nearly everyone [we asked] stepped up.”

McNally came on board despite having two plays—Some Men (now closed) and Deuce—opening this spring. “I think GayFest will help find a core audience for emerging gay playwrights, and that in itself is an important step,” he says. “If the plays are good, I’m confident they will find a larger audience. These are difficult times for all of Off Broadway, and the courage of GayFest must be applauded.”

Writer-actor Busch says he was initially skeptical about whether there was a need for a new gay theater festival, but he soon came around. “One of the negative aspects of assimilation is that it becomes rarer for many gay voices to be heard,” he says. “We used to have all these gay theaters, and most of them went under because you didn’t really need them, because if you were a really good gay writer, you wanted to be at Manhattan Theatre Club or Playwrights Horizons and reach a wider audience. But there are a lot of different voices out there. It’s like all the gay bookstores that have closed since Barnes & Noble opened. They only have two shelves, and only have room for the best-known writers.”

GayFest runs now through Jun 2 at the TBG Arts Center. See also GayFestnyc.com.