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Cutting Edge
The Theater Offensive’s annual assault
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH

Here’s a pop quiz for culture mavens who like to stay a few strides ahead of the zeitgeist: where do you find the issues of tomorrow’s round-table discussions before the talking heads set them spinning? According to Abe Rybeck, artistic director of the Theater Offensive, the forthcoming hot topics are on the edge today — as in OUT on the Edge, his organization’s annual festival celebrating leading figures and rising talents in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender theater.

"This year more than ever, it seems that no one who wants to be in the news gets there without attaching themselves to something gay," Rybeck asserts. "No news issue seems to get covered without a gay angle, no television show seems to be a sensation without a gay character. All these things they want to have out there are what we were presenting years ago. The festival is where you find out what will be splashed across the headlines in the years to come. You can be ahead of the curve and roll your eyes with fully confident boredom when these things hit the mainstream. When you watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and see such a flattened, two-dimensional version of queerness, the festival has a great antidote to that."

Now in its 12th year, OUT on the Edge continues to embody the various artistic and political missions of the diversity-oriented Theatre Offensive overall. The loaded roster includes workshops with artists (Imani Henry on September 13, Noël Alumit on September 19) and panel discussions ("AIDS Activism & Performance," co-sponsored by Massachusetts Asian AIDS Prevention Project on September 25). There are staged readings of new works by local artists Letta Neeley, Thomas DeFrantz, and Melissa Li on September 6 and 7. And, of course, there are the full-scale performances, which include Henry’s B4T (September 11 through 14) and Alumit’s Master of the (Miss) Universe (September 18 through 27).

Henry, a female-to-male transsexual of Caribbean descent, is among this year’s imported performers whose work broaches one of those yet-to-be-dealt-with matters Rybeck refers to. His B4T: Before Testosterone is a multimedia reflection on the experience of communities of color as seen through the eyes and lives of three female-bodied masculine characters. Together, he says, they represent the diversity of transgender experiences. "It’s about gender identity and expression in the context of culture, racism, and trans-oppression. The play has a scholarly — even medical — basis to its examination of what transgender means. But there hasn’t been a lot that’s taken on race in a full scope." He adds that it’s only recently that any research or documentation of the experience of transgender people, in studies of HIV and the long-term effects of hormones, has begun.

Henry, who comes from an exhaustive background of activism and grassroots political organizing, has performed in extravaganzas and at small clubs throughout the US. But his Boston appearance bears significance — and not just because it’s being underwritten by the troupe’s new partnership with the National Performance Network, which facilitates partnerships among independent artists nationwide. Henry, who grew up in Boston and graduated from Emerson, made his professional acting debut with the Theatre Offensive in 1992. Now B4T marks a homecoming. It’s also a reunion, since he’ll be appearing with actress/playwright Renita Martin, in whose work he performed at the 1997 Women on Top Festival, under the direction of Maureen Shea, a former professor at Emerson. "The festival is part of a giant political expression of culture, politics, and thought," he points out, "and the politics and community aspects mean more than theater-y stuff."

The 12th Annual OUT on the Edge Festival is presented by the Theater Offensive September 6 through 27 at the Boston Center for the Arts. Tickets are $18 to $27, or $50 for a Festival PassOUT; call (617) 426-2787 for tickets, (617) 621-6090 for information.


Issue Date: August 29 - September 4, 2003
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