The Left Out Festival Celebrates Fifth Year of LGBT Theatre at Stage Left Studio

Stage Left Studio's Left Out Festival will celebrate itss fifth year from April 14 to April 25, with fourteen performances selected by producers Cheryl King and Joe Hutcheson.  The Festival includes three premieres, three popular favorites, and selected shorts from upcoming new works and current offerings at Stage Left Studio.  The festival highlights gay and lesbian theatre artists while benefiting Bailey House.

This year's festival features Tom Gualtieri and Heather Hill's THAT PLAY: A Solo Macbeth, a wild and frightening 90-minute adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Hill directs Gualtieri as he inhabits 19 characters including Macbeth and his infamous Lady, 3 weird sisters, 4 terrifying apparitions and a slew of Scottish Lords and Ladies.  This play was lauded by Bruce Weber of The New York Times as "highly entertaining, especially creepy, and great fun."   Show dates are Sat, April 14 at 2 pm; Tues, April 17; and Fri, April 20 at 7:30 pm.  Original Music & Sound was written and designed Erin Hill.

Ms. King will direct the premiere of Margaret Morrison's study of lesbian love in the late 1930's, Home in Her Heart, starring Ericka L. Hart and Margaret Morrison, Monday, April 23 and Wednesday, April 25 at 7:30 pm.  Ms. Morrison tackles the survival of lesbian bi-racial loves surviving the black-white divide in this two-act play.  In 1939 London, lesbian and male impersonator Jimmie LeRoy and pianist Claire Hicks have lived, loved, and performed together as mixed race pair for three years. The gathering storm of war and a letter from home plummet them into the harsh reality of returning to a segregated U.S.

Jason Sebacher, whose All Aboard the Hindenburg thrilled audiences at last year's festival, offers another new play, The  Mademoiselles, Sunday, April 15 and Thu, April 19 at 7:30 pm.  Michael Fentin directs the play about a graduate student at the Sorbonne who reads an elderly Alice Toklas her love letters from Gertrude Stein.  Structured like the Cubist paintings Toklas and Stein collected and Stein emulated in her own writing, The Mademoiselles is a play about falling in love: with art, with Paris, with Gertrude, and with a new part of herself-after everything is lost.

Topher Cusumano also returns to the festival, having last stunned audiences with is edgy solo show Roughhouse.  This year, Cusumano was invited to present a staged reading of his new play Getting Away with Mother, Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, April 22 at 2 pm.  King, one of the producers of the Left Out Festival, stars in this farcical black comedy of secrets, lies, and the mother you wish you never had.  The cast includes Don Rider, Gaby Gold, Joe Hutcheson, and Michelle Ramoni.  Ms. King is currently appearing in an extended run of Sally Lambert's Grapefruit at Stage Left, and will be joined by three actors currently being cast.  Directed by Toni Silver, it's the story of Avery, whose estranged mother Matilda appears in his bedroom at 4:00 am with shocking news that will propel his life from dysfunctional to downright dangerous.

Already enjoying an acclaimed run at Stage Left Studio, Sinan Ünel's A Mad Person's Chronicle of a Miserable Marriage will join the festival for two performances on Monday, April 16 and Tue, April 24 at 7:30 pm. This play about Sonya and Leo Tolstoy features John Andert playing both roles.  "Artfully written and imaginatively staged, 'Marriage' is a tour de force that could only be carried off by an actor of Andert's ability" – Hamilton Kahn, Provincetown Banner.

The Left Out Festival welcomes back one of its most successful shows, having originally launched the inaugural festival of 2008.  Drama Desk Award-nominated Solo Performer Frank Blocker returns with a special Wednesday matinee performance on April 18 of Southern Gothic Novel: The Aberdeen, Mississippi Sex-Slave Incident.  Homemade iced tea, both sweet and unsweet, will be served.  Blocker has been invited to Florida State College in Jacksonville to perform the show and teach Master Classes in character acting to FSC students the week following the Left Out Festival.

As is always the tradition with the producers, Selected Shorts will be included in the festival for two performances, Sunday, April 15 at 2:00 pm and Saturday April 21, also at 2:00 pm.  With Selected Shorts, King and Hutcheson offer a variety of work from short plays, performance artists, and even some "greatest hits" from the past and present offerings at Stage Left Studio.  Selections include Michelle Ramoni's June & Nancy featuring Peter Straus; William LoCasto's …And Scene directed by Cassandra Sandberg, starring Patrick Falahee, Chaz Lowery, and Alex Beck; Robin Goldfin's The Angel of Wishes based on a story by Etgar Keret, performed by Jacob Moore, directed by David Carson, and featuring music by composer Oren Neiman;  Boston's own Richard Ballon's Things That Go Bump featuring Clayton Luopa and Matthew Clark as directed by Dawn Monique Williams; a selection from Karen Thibodeau's The Garden Plot, featuring KC Weakley; and selections from Blocker's (Southern Gothic Novel) currently running solo play Stabilized Not Controlled.

All tickets $20 ($2 ticketing surcharge will be added) at www.stageleftstudio.net. A limited number of half-price student tickets will be available. Seating is limited, advance purchase recommended. Net proceeds from this festival are donated to Bailey House, www.baileyhouse.org  who will dedicate funds to their newest program STARS for HIV+ LGBT Youth.

The Left Out Festival is sponsored by Community Media, LLC - publishers of Chelsea Now, Gay City News, The Villager, and The East Villager.

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