At the Criminal Queerness Festival, Pride is global
Homosexuality is criminalized in over 60 countries around the world, and for the past five years, the Criminal Queerness Festival has been shining light on this criminalization and elevating work of playwrights from countries where queerness is illegal.
Homosexuality is criminalized in more than 60 countries around the world, and for the past five years, an annual theater festival in New York City has elevated the work of playwrights from countries where their queerness can land them in prison, or worse.
Adam Odsess-Rubin founded the National Queer Theater in May 2018 to promote queer storytelling, community and representation. But later that year a play submission arrived and opened a new chapter in the organization’s queer advocacy.
The play was “Drowning in Cairo” by Egyptian playwright Adam Ashraf Elsayigh. It chronicled the way a 2001 police raid of the floating gay nightclub Queen Boat affected the lives of the 52 men aboard who were arrested and publicly humiliated. Elsayigh wasn’t able to produce the play in Egypt, where queerness is criminalized and stigmatized, lest he and everyone involved in the production be arrested. Elsayigh had previously only had a reading of it in his apartment, and everyone in attendance kept looking at the door, fearful of encountering a police raid of their own.
“It really struck me that something as innocuous as a play reading could be so dangerous,” Odsess-Rubin said.
He began talking with Elsayigh about producing a festival for WorldPride, a series of events held in New York in 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, to feature “queer plays that would otherwise be censored in their home countries,” Odsess-Rubin said. And in June 2019, the Criminal Queerness Festival was born, giving voice to work that may have had to remain silent elsewhere.
Rating: 5