This weekend marks Orlando Fringe’s first Out Fest mini theater festival. Eight curated plays that focus on LGBTQ issues through comedy, drama, and even puppetry will be performed by Central Florida groups during the three-day festival at Fringe ArtSpace downtown.
Out Fest is under the umbrella of the Orlando Fringe Theater Festival, with its trademark two-week performing arts festival in May and other mini-fests and programming throughout the year.
Ciara Hannon is Special Events Producer for the Fringe and Executive Producer of Out Fest. She says the festival is a safe space to see new artists and learn more about the LGBTQ community of artists in Orlando.
“It’s about highlighting queer artists telling queer stories,” Hannon said. “And we have such an eclectic mix. We have something from a children’s puppet show, to a dazzling one-man show, to a show tackling homosexuality and religion. We are a charcuterie board of sensational work.”
The three-day festival was originally scheduled for Pride Month in June, but Fringe ArtSpace suffered catastrophic flooding from an AC unit failure just before Out Fest was slated to move in for tech rehearsals.
“And I want to applaud the staff [of Fringe] for really sticking with this festival and not going, ‘Oh well, maybe next year, pookie,’” said Hannon. “They really did basically say ‘We're not going to give up on this.’ So we found this time in September, and how we’re pitching this festival in this time frame is that Orlando Pride is at the beginning of October. So, this is like a early kickoff event for Orlando Pride.”
Hannon runs their own queer theater company called 11th Hour that performs regularly during Fringe festivals. But they look at Out Fest as a chance to give back “and fully produce something that is uplifting other queer artists as I have been uplifted,” Hannon said. “I even have a little tattoo of it. It's one Keith Haring guy holding up another little Keith Haring guy, because one of my favorite, favorite quotes is, ‘We are only as strong as the shoulders that we stand on.’ So really, I want to make sure that my shoulders are strong enough for the next people coming in, for the next 19-year-old who doesn't quite know what to do, but knows that they have a story to tell.”
Hannon said if there’s one underlying message of all eight shows and the festival itself, it’s persevering through adversity.
No matter what, they said, “Queer art is still going to live, and it's still going to thrive and survive here in Central Florida with the Orlando Fringe.”
“That's honestly the takeaway that I feel like I need right now,” Hannon added, “is that queer art persists. We persist.”
