Theater for Social Change
Highlighting queer voices from around the globe
While the theater world has long been enriched by the contributions of LGBTQ composers, playwrights, choreographers, and performers, explicitly queer theater companies are rare. In 2018, a young theater artist set out to fill that gap by launching the National Queer Theater (NQT), a NYC-based company whose mission is to foster and support LGBTQ communities through social justice in the performing arts. NQT develops and produces socially-conscious plays by queer playwrights that examine and uplift stories in our communities.
Stonewall Community Foundation has funded a wide range of social and political issues, from ending AIDS to establishing civil rights protections for LGBTQ people. Stonewall also understands that stories capturing our daily lives matter and that art transforms. Recognizing the power of the arts to build bridges and empower those who do not often see themselves reflected, Stonewall gave NQT one of their first foundation grants to produce the 2019 Criminal Queerness Festival. The Festival brought together playwrights from around the globe to share gripping stories about the LGBTQ experience. The month-long festival showcased four queer playwrights from countries that criminalize LGBTQ identities and communities.
The Criminal Queerness Festival was a key addition to 2019’s WorldPride/Stonewall 50 celebration, when revelers from around the world came to New York to celebrate our community’s resilience and reflect on what has changed (and what has stayed the same) since the Stonewall Uprising. Over the course of the Festival, more than 700 people witnessed its groundbreaking performances. The shows not only provided a platform for LGBTQ artists facing censorship in places like Pakistan and Tanzania, but also challenged audiences to engage and reflect upon the status of civil rights in the United States and abroad. The festival was profiled by the New York Times, Thrillest, and The Advocate, which called it “one of six ways to resist at World Pride.”
