GAYFEST NYC 2008
UNITED STATES
NEW YORK • TBG ARTS CENTER • 14 MAY – 15 JUNE 2008The five-week event, produced by Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W. Batman, presents professional Off-Broadway productions of new works by Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) authors or spotlighting gay issues. Five fully-staged professional productions featuring Actors’ Equity Association casts, talk-backs with the authors of the Festival plays, appearances by members of the LGBT community, in addition to other events.
This year’s Main Stage selections, from submissions worldwide, are Edward the King by David Brendan Hopes, directed by Sidney J. Burgoyne, Spill the Wine by Brian Dykstra, directed by Margarett Perry and Jumping Blind by Philip Gerson, director TBA. Two additional plays will be produced in the Studio Theatre: The Wrath of Aphrodite by Tim O’Leary, directed by Martin Casella and Steve Hayes’ Hollywood Reunion, written by and starring Steve Hayes.
A GayFest press release included the following plot summaries for the 2008 GayFest selection:
EDWARD THE KING by David Brendan Hopes (World Premiere) – May 14-24
Beset by the duties of his birth and dominated by a heroic father, Edward looks forward to a life of apparent conformity and desperate subterfuge, until he meets Piers Gaveston in a dirty alley. It is love and rebellion at first sight. From then on, Edward steers a perilous course between desire and safety, which does not entirely end even when he becomes king, and faces not only the usual enemies of unconventional love, but his queen and her lover as well. Edward the King neatly straddles the fourteenth and twenty-first centuries, which manage to appear almost equally violent and inhospitable to love.
David Brendan Hopes is Professor of Literature and Language at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and director of Black Swan Theater.