The LGBTQ Center of Orlando is holding its first-ever QFEST, a four-day theater and film festival focused around Central Florida’s queer artists, performers and stories.
It’s a collaboration with the Orlando Fringe Festival, which planned a second OutFest with similar programming this year but ran into budget constraints.
The Center’s CEO George Wallace said the wide variety of offerings is in keeping with the Fringe Fest philosophy that there’s something for everyone, like “solo shows, and storytelling, and magic shows that are family-friendly, and films, and adult drag queen story time.”
Wallace said, in light of OutFest’s cancellation, he took up this project to bridge the gap and make sure that a queer-focused arts festival could continue.
“This may be a one-time event, and it may continue on for years to come. It just depends on what's going to happen with Orlando Fringe… and if they’re able to remount their festival,” Wallace said.
In the meantime, Fringe staffers are pitching in on QFEST. “In fact, they're allowing us to use their equipment, lights, sound, pipe-and-drape [stage curtains] and all of those things to kind of turn our Grand Room here at the Center into a fully functioning, 60-seat theater,” Wallace said.
Noting his ten-year run as Orlando Fringe Executive Director until he joined the Center in 2017, he added, “It's just my two dream organizations working together!”
Wallace said he can’t overstate the importance of continuing an LGBTQ-centered festival right now.
“To me, arts are very healing, and I think that our community needs a lot of healing right now,” he said. “And also elevating their voices at a time when administrations are trying to silence us, making sure that we're loud and proud… and giving money back to the artist too, right? It's important to support local artists.”
And those local artists are generating buzz for the festival, said Wallace. Of the 18 shows, “‘Just Dempsey’ is getting a lot of traction. Dempsey is 13 years old, and this will be her very first cabaret. Also, ‘Greetings from Queertown’ is one of our films, and it's by Watermark publishing group [publishers of Watermark Out News], and it really highlights the history of Orlando and the queer community.”
Wallace said that some of the proceeds from QFEST are going toward funding scholarships offered by the Center and the Orlando Fringe.
“So it's really about giving back to organizations, and queer youth, and giving money to these scholarships, so that they can continue to be given out, year after year,” said Wallace.
