Third season of Lavender Fest answers how performance art fits into activism

Several years ago, performer and playwright Ty Autry had the idea of bringing together a local performing arts festival for the LGBTQ community. Now his Lavender Fest is about to open its third season, and every aspect of the rainbow spectrum — “bisexual, poly, queer, trans, non-binary, gay and everything in between you can think of” — is on tap. 

The 2026 event hosts a kick-off celebration at the Atlanta Eagle August 5 and then follows with four days of performances August 6 through August 9 at Out Front Theatre Company. 

For Lavender’s third season, Autry and his team decided to embrace the title and theme Unerasable. “We felt that was a wonderful way to highlight the fact that not only do queer stories exist in our past canon but that they are also being written today,” he says. “The act of writing queer stories today is an act of rebellion and resistance, to proclaim that we cannot be erased that easily.” 

The theme came to him last October, heavily influenced by what is happening in the world. “Our current federal government was going really heavy and hard that season, erasing gay history and trans history, erasing documents off the White House website that involved support and help. It got me thinking: What can we do as an organization that cannot get political? We are not here to endorse any political candidate. How do we use art in our messaging to make a stance and make it clear that what we see we do not support? And how does performance art fit into activism?” 

Five of the eight shows this year are world premieres, and seven are by Atlanta-specific artists. 

One Autry is particularly looking forward to is Nick Eibler’s ManBoy.  He feels it will be a fascinating performance. “It’s a really interesting coming-of-age story that I think will re-invent the wheel on how we look at those. Sometimes [those stories] can be a little tried and true, and we’ve seen a lot of them over the ages, but his idea and through line of where that transition is — between going from boy to man, especially as a queer kid to queer man — that discovery is fascinating. It’s something I think we can all tap into to some degree.” 

Eibler always yearned to be older when he was younger. “Over the course of the show, I take the audience on this journey about this desire to be seen and treated like an adult,” he says. “I wanted to be taken seriously and seen as a legitimate theater actor at 9 years old. That also intertwined with my coming out journey.” The journey included a life-changing event at a theater camp. 

Another recommendation from Autry is Then, Eve from Billie Jane, who hails from Orlando. Jane tells the story of Eden through a queer lens. “As someone who also wrote a show about growing up in the Deep South and Christianity, I am fascinated by any kind of narrative that takes the Bible and turns it upside down a little bit. This concept of God creating Adam and Adam creating himself is brilliant, as is the idea that Eve is a trans woman and –what does that mean, exactly?”

One production with Atlanta angles is The F-Word by Markell Williams, who has lived in the South all his life and has been in Atlanta since 2005. The playwright calls The F-Word a raw, comedic solo piece that follows himself — a Black queer man — as he journeys though identity and performative acceptance. “It’s about reclaiming the power back from a word that stole so much,” Williams says. The F-word here, says Williams, is the “horrid word” faggot. 

Williams adds that the show is really about being named without one’s permission. “When I thought about writing this and using my life as the source material, it only made sense to use it about a word that created such a dark shadow of my life and affected so much,” he says.

Other Lavender Fest performances include local playwright John Mabey’s Mischief & Moonflowers — which Autry says involves film noir, spies, agents, lust and love — Queer Girl, Straight Guy: Tales from the Polyverse by Lily Kerrigan and Matthew Marcus; and Oops, Can’t Say That by Olive Zhang. Two special events will also take place: a staged reading of Àse Freed’s Another Dimension Girl and live comedy by Matthew English. 

Besides the shows on tap, Autry is excited that Lavender Fest has tripled its budget. That means the company can pay its artists. “Our mission and goal is to keep growing our revenue stream or donations coming in because 70% of our ticket sales go to the artists. Last year it was 60% — and eventually we’ll get to 100.” 

Where and When

Lavender Fest is at Out Front Theatre Company August 6 through August 9. Ticket packages vary.
999 Brady Ave. NW.

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.