Stage Left Theater’s Queer Voices Festival puts spotlight on LGBTQIA+ community

More than a year ago, when Alana Shepherd was working as the interim artistic director of Stage Left Theater, she proposed the idea of a festival featuring short pieces by writers who were part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

She moved on from the position before the festival came to fruition, and the idea remained just that until Stage Left reached out to Shepherd in the spring and said, essentially, “Remember that idea you had? Let’s do it.”

With that, the Queer Voices Festival was born. The festival, which opened Thursday and runs through Sunday, features 14 pieces written by trans or queer writers. The works include monologues, two- or three-person plays and songs that are no longer than five minutes.

The festival features works by Matthew Fox, Arianna Rose, Alex Dremann, Glenn Rawls, Sam Springhorn, Neil Ellis Orts, Beatrice Alder, Allison Fradkin, Ash, T’Asia Driggs, Eden Lane, David Lipschutz and Jack Dunbar.

The festival cast includes Zayn Canady, Andie Collings, Charlie Curtiss, Mikayla Daniels, Fox, Rue Glasow, Charlie Ladd, Hel Larreau, Aaron Maddox, Jenna Majeskey, Kalla Mort, Adrienne Dellwo Neal, Koa Nemo, Lanee Rucker-Rodriguez and Shepherd, while Daniels, Ladd, Dellwo Neal, Shepherd and Ijah Moore direct the works.

Shepherd received nearly 80 submissions from the nationwide call for pieces.

In Orts’ “Widow House,” a widow grieves the loss of her partner in, and with, her house. In Alder’s “Cholera Wedding,” two orphans try to escape a ritual that promises to put an end to a deadly sickness.

In Ash’s “Long Hair, Don’t Care,” Zelda wonders if today will be the day she opens her heart for the first time in years. In Driggs’ “Vessels,” two women chat while aboard the Staten Island Ferry, and in Fox’s “The Things I’m Still Unlearning,” a trans man reflects on his bullying and forgiveness.

Lipschutz wrote about a cat burglar who confesses their love at the wrong moment in “O Burgled Companion, Thou Hast Pilfered Mine Heart,” and Lane wrote of a dancer with an invisible disability who hears “You’re so brave” one time too many in “Discipline.”

The reader’s theater-style event also includes pieces that tell of a trans call center worker struggling to get through a shift, two people finding common ground while browsing a flea market in London, a queer breakdown of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, an exploration of trans love and self-love, a fairy tale meet cute, two people waiting in a line though they don’t actually know where the line leads and a first date that takes a turn after a discovery is made.

Writers were told their pieces should be about the queer and trans experiences but were given no other guidelines.

Dreaming big, Shepherd envisions a Queer Voices Festival that becomes a staple of Spokane’s theater calendar, an event that stretches across multiple weekends and in multiple venues. She believes that framework would allow for short pieces, one-act plays and full-length plays to be produced, though she knows slow and steady is the best way to go.

“This is a good way to start,” she said. “This is a good size to work with this year as a way to test the waters, and plant a flag in the ground, you might say. A pride flag, if you will. This is a great space for us to grow upon in future years.”

While already dreaming of the future, Shepherd is still very much focused on launching the Queer Voices Festival in the strongest way possible. Though she said it’s obvious, she believes it still needs to be said that a festival that spotlights members of the LGBTQIA+ community is vitally important right now.

“We’re losing agency, we’re losing representation, we’re losing our grip on our rights,” she said. “Any avenue we have to tell our stories, to say our piece is ever more important.”