Tickets for the second annual Lavender Performing Arts Festival are set to go on sale May 21.
Lavender Fest is a showcase for queer artists, taking place over five days from July 16-20 at Out Front Theatre Company. This is the second year for the festival, and this year’s iteration will feature 11 performances as opposed to last year’s nine.
Festival Director Ty Autry said that the success of last year’s event proved that Atlanta is excited to support queer artists. According to Autry, the festival hosted 650 people in total and was able to pay out over $4,000 to the artists who performed.
“We learned that people in Atlanta are hungry for new queer work on stage,” Autry said.
The festival also has a theme this year, which is “Celebrating Every Letter.” Autry (who uses he/they pronouns) said they wanted to show that queer art encompasses a wide range of identities and not focus solely on a white cis gay male perspective.
“I’ve been really curious on a personal level about the discussion of how large the queer alphabet is. People sometimes make fun of it, or don’t understand it,” Autry said. “But to me, I always view it as language evolving to give us more ways to describe ourselves.”
This year, the festival will be operating under a nonprofit called Qreative Voices. Autry said the hope is that the nonprofit will allow Lavender Fest more flexibility in terms of what it can achieve.
“I started a new nonprofit to support this effort,” he said. “This is our first initiative –that will hopefully be one of many, as we continue to grow as a nonprofit organization – that supports and amplifies Southern queer storytelling.”
Autry said he always planned to start a nonprofit at some point in Lavender Fest’s future. However, the current political landscape for LGBTQ+ people in the United States pushed the decision forward.
“We hope to continue to inspire artists to feel safe to continue to create work with our support,” Autry said.
Autry said that Lavender Fest was not affected by President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel National Endowment for the Arts grants.
“Because we are new, we don’t have a single national grant,” they said. “So we weren’t hurt by the NEA’s reversal of their grants. The money that we’re getting in from individual contributors who support this idea, [they] also understand that the money that funnels into Qreative Voices, funnels back into the artists.”
This year’s Lavender Fest will open with Ruby Redd’s Birdcage Bingo at the Atlanta Eagle on July 16. Guests will be able to mingle with the artists, and tips to the drag queens will go toward the organization Joining Hearts, which helps those impacted by HIV/AIDS in Atlanta.
“It’s also fun to get in there and help another organization by hopefully bringing in a large crowd to tip those queens and support a local organization that also needs assistance,” Autry said.
The other shows featured at Lavender Fest will be:
- “Yesterday is Dead” by Maria Chryssopoulos
- “The Lily Show” by Lily Kerrigan
- “Stuck” by JJ Ivey
- “Bottle of Soup” by CWK
- “Black Bastard” by Jon Gentry
- “One Morning At The Office” by Vandy Beth Glenn
- “Gracefully Stumbling Thru Beekeeping Age” by Mark Orintas
- “I Thought I’d Be Famous By Now” by David Cohn
- “With Love, Women” by Hannah Marie Smith
- “Conversations On How to Get Your Mom Laid” by Ty Autry
More information on tickets and showtimes can be found on Lavender Fest’s website.