When the Broadway theater season dies down in the summer, cabaret stars in see-through negligees and hot pink thongs take the stage at Dixon Place in downtown Manhattan.
The nonprofit theater company's annual HOT! Festival, which runs through August, also features gender-bending dancers and dramatists, a lesbian exploring the life of a cross-dressing Harlem Renaissance blues singer, a radical comic spewing invective against the Bush administration and a gay man in a blue bunny suit prophesying the end of the world.
Now in its 15th year, the festival has become the place to catch New York's edgiest performance art by mostly gay and lesbian actors, writers and dancers who are far from household names even among the most die-hard theater fans _ but could very well be someday.
"When it started, there was really nothing else like it in New York," says Earl Dax, who is curating this year's festival. "Now it plays such an important role in the cultural life of the city. There's a real commitment to supporting new work, works in progress and emerging artists. You can send in a script and if they like it, they'll give you a night."
Unlike what happens on New York's more traditional stages, there are no restrictions at the festival, as in much performance art "downtown" _ the name given to the amorphous region below Manhattan's 14th Street where young artists in the city work and perform.
Nudity is de rigueur, as are topics that blur the line between gender and sexuality. Many artists don't identify themselves specifically as gay or straight, rather as part of a larger omnisexual culture. Many pieces tend to be autobiographically based, though some also verge on the political, the sociological and the utterly ridiculous.
On one billing at the festival, former Whitney biennial dancer and choreographer Julie Atlas Muz performs a piece exploring the mentality of a female suicide bomber in which she straps sticks of dynamite to her nude torso while wearing cherry-red pumps. She's followed by dancer and video artist Michael Cross Burke, who uses three different forms of media to mock contradictions in the gay community, and Cary Curran, who tells a gyrating, raucous story of transforming from Catholic school girl to New York burlesque dancer.
The festival also includes less risque pieces, such as Kate Rigg's play about Asian-American stereotypes that was drawn from nearly 100 oral histories and interviews she conducted across the country, and Michelle Matlock's piece on blues singer Gladys Bentley.
Veteran downtown performing artist Penny Arcade performs a monologue about losing friends to AIDS, while lesbian humorist Reno workshops her latest act _ part-comedy, part-diatribe _ on the country's political situation. Gay writer and performance artist Jeffrey Essmann also returns to New York after 10 years in Chicago to present his newest one-man show, "Skin Deep."
"There's a mix of veteran performers and people who have perhaps never stepped foot on a stage," Dax says. "It speaks to the mission of Dixon Place to be a laboratory for performers."
The theater hasn't strayed far from this ideal in its 20 years. But the HOT! Festival was initially met with some resistance. Ellie Covan, the theater's founder and executive director, says there were those in the gay community who feared it would marginalize homosexual performers at a time when the community was trying to overcome the scourge of the AIDS epidemic.
"There were some people who didn't want to participate because they didn't want to be identified only with a special festival. It was a statement. I do understand and empathize with that thinking, but it really isn't about that," she says. "The festival called attention to a lot of artists who weren't getting noticed."
Dax says many such artists still struggle to make it, performing in bars and nightclubs in the East Village and Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood for little to no money. Dixon Place is one of the few theater spaces in the city _ the East Village's P.S. 122 is another _ that gives nontraditional artists a place to perform without the din of the Friday night bar crowd.
Dixon Place's current abode is testament to this dedication. Located on the Bowery, which used to be one of lower Manhattan's grittiest areas, the theater is little more than a large living room with an assortment of weathered sofas and chairs and a small space for performing. Beer and sodas are sold out of a beat-up white refrigerator, and the landing at the top of the stairs serves as a rehearsal space.
Lately, however, the theater has been enjoying a slightly higher profile. One of its commissions, Lisa Kron's play, "Well," made it to Broadway this spring and earned the actress a Tony nomination _ a major accomplishment for a theater that literally seats about 30 people.
Dixon Place has also received $1 million in funding from the city over the past two years and a $500,000 grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which will help it finish construction on a new theater space in the Lower East Side. Scheduled to open next spring, it will feature a theater that can seat up to 100, as well as a smaller, secondary stage, a community center and a rehearsal space.
Despite the successes, Covan doesn't anticipate major changes at Dixon Place. It will still focus on experimental theater and reach out to the entire community and continue to help artists develop new work.
"It's very important to make the audience understand they are participating in the process by being there and that it's appreciated," she says. "Their presence is going to influence the development of the work and that's a priority for us.
"It's a special environment. You have permission to take risks."
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On the Net:
http://www.dixonplace.org/
