Dav Yendler shares his thoughts on the XYZ Festival of New Works.
For me, the XYZ Festival is an exploration what new queer work can offer a community. When we were working in collaboration with Colloaboraction on our Sketchbook show, we always batted around the concept that “queer youth are ambassadors of the new.” By saying this we inexorably linked together the concepts of the queer and the new and that pairing has stuck with me ever since.
Last year’s festival tried to express our theater and our mission with Out’n’About/maps; the thesis of the festival was that the queer community was in every community and so our events were spread around the city. While the last year’s thesis is still absolutely valid, I’m interested in exploring this relationship between queerness and newness. There’s a lot that’s new with this festival- new process, new panel, new plays. Here’s a thought experiment- take our 20 semi-finalist plays and either A) remove all the “queer elements” and/or B) turn them into “straight elements.” Can you do this? Are these 20 plays suddenly quotidian? Are they even plays?
These are by no means the chief questions I’m asking when I read these semi-finalists. I’m also interested in how we as a theater interact with our audience as a cross section between the theater and queer communities (especially in regards to last year’s attempt and especially with our purposeful inclusion and acknowledgment of local playwrights). Additionally, when we make a concerted effort to have our close friends and family have a strong hand in shaping the festival, how are we expressing our theater’s identity? These are questions that interest me as a theater practitioner, as a straight dude working in a queer joint, and as an artist.
Photo Credit: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q1ecy7eA7BA/SxA7JhGSQ5I/AAAAAAAABBI/LqdEpvgsBmQ/s400/z.jpg
