Thank You For Coming Out to Host First Ever Pride Night at Magnet Theater on June 20

Thank You For Coming Out presents Pride Night at the Magnet Theater on Monday, June 20, 2016, at 254 West 29th Street, Ground Floor, NYC. Tickets are available to reserve at www.magnettheater.com. Tickets are $7 for each hour, and 100 percent of the ticket proceeds from the entire evening are being donated by the Magnet Theater to I'm From Driftwood (https://imfromdriftwood.com).

LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning) performers of all experience levels from around NYC will be performing during each hour of the night.

6:30 pm: Thank You For Coming Out Presents: Confetti - A Pride Night Mixer

Your chance to get onstage and improvise with other LGBTQ performers in a safe, inclusive, and fun environment! Hosted by Peter Appleby and Eleanor Lewis.

7:30 pm: Thank You For Coming Out Presents: Spectrum - An LGBTQ Storytelling Hour

Exceptional storytellers from the worlds of NYC theater, publishing, comedy, and journalism take center stage along with several up-and-coming raconteurs. Hosted by T.J. Mannix.

9:00 pm: Thank You For Coming Out Presents: Palette - An LGBTQ Sketch Hour

Palette welcomes New York's most fabulous LGBTQ writers and performers to the table as we paint the town silly in celebration of Pride! Featuring a rich bouquet of characters and sketches, our collaborative comedy blend promises to delight even the most straight-faced of art critics. Directed by Charlie Nicholson.

10:30 pm: Thank You For Coming Out: An LGBTQ Improv Event

Thank You For Coming Out celebrates the LGBTQ community with improv and storytelling from performers of all levels. Based on the details of a vulnerable and heartfelt coming-out story from one of our two storytellers, our improvisers make up a hilariously insightful and creative show (and then a musical!) on the spot. Hosted by Dubbs Weinblatt.

Featured performers in Spectrum - An LGBTQ Storytelling Hour will include Tim Manley, Noah Michelson, Meg Ferrill, and Kevin R. Free.

Tim Manley is the writer and illustrator of Alice in Tumblr-land: And Other Fairy Tales for a New Generation. His true stories have been featured on The Moth Radio Hour and in his solo show Feelings: Because why pretend the show is about anything else? You can find his work at timmanleytimmanley.com, or you can tweet him @timtimmanley.

Noah Michelson is the editorial director of Voices and the executive editor of Queer Voices, both on The Huffington Post. He received his MFA in Poetry from New York University, and his poems have been featured in The New Republic, The Best American Erotic Poetry from 1800 to the Present, and other publications. He co-hosts The Huffington Post Love+Sex podcast, as well as weekly live streaming shows about queerness and culture on Facebook and YouNow. Michelson has also contributed to Out magazine, Details, and BlackBook and has served as a commentator for the BBC, MSNBC, Logo TV, Entertainment Tonight, Current TV, Fuse, and Sirius XM.

Meg Ferrill is a NYC-based storyteller, comedian, and writer. Meg was selected to perform at The NYC New Guns of Comedy Competition, Upright Citizen's Brigade Stand-Up Smackdown, Mortified, and Amateur Night at the Apollo. She is a four-time winner of The Moth's NYC StorySLAM and holds one NYC GrandSLAM title. Ferrill was cast in Morgan Spurlock's Webby-nominated series Failure Club, an online documentary featuring seven people pursuing lifelong dreams and conquering the fear of failure in the process.

Kevin R. Free is a writer/performer whose work has been showcased on NPR and in theaters across the United States. His most recent work, the web series Gemma & The Bear! (www.GemmaAndTheBear.com), received the only award of excellence from the Best Shorts Competition. His full-length plays include A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People (semifinalist, Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference 2013); The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, or TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS; Night of the Living N-Word!, and AM I DEAD: The Untrue Narrative of Anatomical Lewis, The Slave (commissioned by Flux Theatre Ensemble through the FluxForward program 2015). He is an alumnus of the New York Neo-Futurists, with whom he wrote and performed regularly in Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes) between 2007 and 2011. An award-winning voice actor, he has narrated over 150 books and is the voice of Kevin on the popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale. In 2010, he was named one of NYTheatre.com's fifteen people of the year because of his "outstanding, noteworthy contributions to the New York theatre scene." He now serves as producing artistic director of the Fire This Time Festival, a festival for emerging playwrights of the African Diaspora. Visit www.kevinrfree.com or find him on Twitter @kevinrfree.

Featured performers in Thank You For Coming Out: An LGBTQ Improv Event will include Joel Perez (Fun Home), Michael Hartney (School of Rock), Jeff Hiller (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Jody Shelton (Baby Wants Candy), Bowen Yang (Broad City), Heather Trobe (Mashable), T.J. Mannix (Blank! The Musical), and Suzanne Hitchman (Reductress). The cast also features Kelsey Bailey, Brad Benson, Stacy Dunn, Virginia Hamilton, Anne Hogan, Benji Kayne, Henry Koperski, Kaityln Krieg, Nicole Lee, Emily Schorr Lesnick, John Lowe, Michael Lutton, Zach Meyers, Charlie Nicholoson, John Pires, Nat Silverman, Mark Venaglia, and Dubbs Weinblatt.

I'm From Driftwood, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in New York City, aims to help LGBTQ people learn more about their community, and everyone learn more about themselves, through the power of storytelling. Founded in 2009, I'm From Driftwood has collected over a thousand videos highlighting a range of topics that affect every age, race, gender, background, and culture while deepening an understanding, preserving history, and encouraging empathy. Past storytellers include Tony Award winner Alan Cumming (Cabaret), Emmy winner Laverne Cox, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Noah Michelson (Huffington Post Queer Voices editor), and Houston Mayor Annise Parks, as well as hundreds of other queer voices.

Magnet Theater, NYC arrived in March 2005. Founders Armando Diaz, Ed Herbstman, and Alex Marino came together with the common goal of teaching improvisation and sketch writing while developing and presenting fantastic comedy shows and other diverse entertainments and art. Magnet Theater's founders studied under long-form Chicago improv guru Del Close at Improv Olympic and have since helped to shape the New York comedy scene dramatically through teaching, performing, and presenting comical theatrics both individually and together.

Magnet Theater offers a full schedule of classes in improv comedy, musical improv, sketch writing and performing, storytelling, and on-camera auditioning for all levels of experience with new classes forming regularly. All classes are based on the Magnet Theater Core Curriculum, which provides students with a solid foundation in improv fundamentals coupled with ample performance opportunities. For more information about classes at Magnet Theater or to register, visit www.magnettheater.com.

Magnet Theater hosts performances every night from 6:30 pm to midnight at 254 West 29th Street, Ground Floor, NYC. Show times and descriptions can be found at www.magnettheater.com. Seating is general admission. Lobby opens 30 minutes prior to each show. Beer and wine are for sale. No drink minimum. Wheelchair accessible. Air-conditioned.

For more information, visit www.magnettheater.com.