Over 20 years ago, following rehearsal for Guys and Dolls at Vianney High School, I shared a pile of flour tortillas with my cool new friends at a corner table at Denny’s. “Eileen, I have something I have to tell you,” one of my cool friends said in his camo tank top. “I’m gay.”
I was shocked. Till then, my grasp of gay culture was limited to Madonna videos watched in secret, a few Nirvana lyrics, and rumors about Pee-Wee. If you asked me what “Trans” was, I might have guessed some abbreviation for the Hasbro robots. A lesbian was a woman singing about a fast car, or another one singing about a window.
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Of course, I was not alone in my ignorance of the incredible depth and great diversity of the LGBTQ community, and I’d guess that, for many St. Louisans in 2016, nearly a year after the historic Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, elisions persist in our knowledge of what being lesbian, gay, bi, trans, or queer might actually look and feel like.
For those curious about what it’s like to be curious, questioning, or assuredly outside the milquetoasty hetero norms that yet tyrannize our culture, pulling on a fresh pair of BRIEFS might be your April answer. In its fifth annual year, BRIEFS: A Festival of Short LGBTQ Plays dares to denude the nuance and complexity of the gay experience in a stripped-down live theatre format. Want to learn how a Grindr’s a lot like Tinder? What it’s like to go shoe-shopping with a transgender mom? These 10-minute plays promise to take us places no less brave, messy, and human than the LGBTQ experience itself.
Presented by Pearl Vodka in conjunction with That Uppity Theatre Company and Vital VOICE Magazine, the festival brings together national and local talent in a series of eight plays by eight different playwrights— including three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and five-time Emmy nominee James Still and Writers Guild award-winning General Hospital writer Scott C. Sickles.
“Of course we read about these LGBTQ stories and of course hear about them,” says Vital VOICE CEO Darin Slyman, “but rarely the opportunity to see them.” Selected from over 250 submissions across the country, BRIEFS doesn’t shy from edgier content—whether it be the puttering of an awkward one-night stand, the ramifications of rock-star husbands hooking up on the sly, or a young girl role-playing with her female bestie to a ‘50s sci-fi sitcom.
And lest this seem another white-guy showcase, such is not the case. “We make a sincere effort to have gender parity for our directors,” says founder and co-producer Joan Lipkin, “and significant representation of work about lesbians, along with other members of the LGBTQ community.” This year features two new female African-American directors, Jacqueline Thompson and Fannie Lebby, to its roster. It’s also the second year to celebrate the annual Ken Haller Playwriting Competition for LGBTQ and Allied Youth, honoring this year’s recipient, Max Friedman, for his play The Grind.
A rainbow splash on a now-red state, St. Louis has long hosted an illustrious history of gay activism and fellowship, as chronicled by historian Steven Brawley’s recent book Gay and Lesbian St. Louis, based in part on his LGBT online archive. BRIEFS remains one of the few festivals of short LGBTQ plays in the nation, another sign that however homogenously hetero our culture might seem from a Lambert jet bridge or Denny’s parking lot, it is actually a hotbed of creative dissidence. We need only open our eyes.
BRIEFS: A Festival of Short LGBTQ Plays takes the stage April 8–10, 2016, at the Rialto Ballroom in the Centene Center for Arts and Education in Grand Center.
