LGBTQ+ Artists Shine at the 2021 Fringe
June may be over, but Pride is just getting started at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival!
The Fringe is proud to provide a space for all kinds of artists and creators to express, create, and explore the full range of the human experience. In our constant desire to provide a stage for original art and to bring artists together, we are excited to provide a platform for a variety of LGBTQ+ stories at this year’s Fringe.
“I love all the camaraderie at Fringe,” said 3 Drag Queens Defuse a Bomb at a Talk Show actress and writer Elise Hanson. “There’s just a sense in the air that you’re among your people. All that creativity in one place creates this incredible, electrifying energy.”
Hanson previously participated in Fringe in 2018, where her show The Secret Son of Hitler won “Best of FF.” This year’s show promises to bring joy and excitement while also helping provide representation for various queens in the drag community.
“My show is about folks participating in the queer fringe activity of drag, so my show at Fringe is full of LGBTQIA representation,” Hanson explained, “three of us in the cast identify as gay or queer. I’m also showcasing a female-identifying drag queen to show that playing with gender in that idiom is for everyone!”
While Hanson uses humor and a celebration of drag culture to bring the community together, Madazon Can-Can of Circus Steria intends to help unite audiences through the universal feeling of grief in their show, Grief Circus.
“I am most looking forward to the audience's reactions,” Can-Can shared, adding that “the combined empathetic responses to personal grief narratives in our community and the coming together of individuals in a space of openness, heartache, sorrow, support and connection.”
Throughout their career as a performing artist, Can-Can has seen significant change in LGBTQ+ representation, explaining that “I have seen an explosion of queer, POC, female and other underrepresented artists, writers, directors and playwrights come out of the woodwork and out of the closet to amazing responses publicy and interpersonally.”
Can-Can’s previous experience with the Fringe was instrumental in helping them realize their identity. “The Fringe is the first place I felt safe enough to be unedited, unfiltered and entirely myself. My first production was a one person show entitled Genit-HELL YEAH! and it moved me to realize my own identity as a trans non-binary person as well as realize the critical necessity for stages for all queer people and the access that is limited due to money and privilege,” they said.
While Grief Circus plans to embrace grief and the LGBTQ+ experience head on, Bruce Ryan Costella has decided to tackle familiar themes through a more subliminal approach.
“MUTTNIK, while not overtly queer in its content, centers on a dog reflecting on its place in the world while in orbit,” he explained, “The dog is female and I (portraying her) am very much a bearded male. She is ousted from her home and struggles to find a new one, before falling in with chosen family. These feelings of displacement within systems that are bigger than one individual are not uncommon for members of the LGBTQIA+ community.”
Costella has been performing in fringe festivals since his young adulthood and these experiences have been instrumental to him as a creator, “My craft has utterly been shaped by my experience as a fringe artist. I first performed at a festival at age 14 and it was a kind of revelation that queer artistry could take up space, be successful and resonate with people.”
The fun doesn’t end there! The Great Salt Lake Fringe is honored to provide a stage for many LGBTQ+ individuals to showcase their stories, talent, and passion. Click here learn more about these shows and many more, and buy your tickets now!