Artists grappling with the political has been the norm for thousands of years, but when art and social-political questioning merge at an interdisciplinary performance festival like Austin’s Fusebox Festival 2020 (April 15-19), the results can sometimes expand artistic boundaries.
Nearly 20 years ago, Craig Lynch and Jeff Rane took a look around Dallas and noticed a gap. Despite having the sixth-biggest population of LGBTQ people in the nation and a reputation as one of the country’s most gay-friendly cities, no theater company in Dallas was regularly producing theater that told this community’s stories.
Attention, opera-goers: If you’ve been looking for a chance to change the mind of “that one friend” who swears they don’t like opera, this could be the time.
Standing six-foot-six, sporting a luxuriant silver mane and beard, decked out on formal occasions in flamboyant capes, he turned heads from Texas to New York.
Houston-based artists Stephan Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen, known collectively as Hillerbrand+Magsamen, address topics of family, communication, and consumerism, most recently through their ongoing body of artworks called The Devices Project.
For artists Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin, putting up plaques and statues or writing books are still absolutely necessary, but still they see many opportunities to let queer folk “be super queer in how they honor and preserve these histories.”