Festivale!

Sun.-Sun., June 6-13, various times, $10-$30, Philadelphia Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St., 800-595-4849, traversetheater.tix.com.

by Josh Middleton

[ gay it forward ]

After last year's inaugural run, Festivale! creator T. Desiree Hines discovered that maintaining an annual LGBTQ-themed arts fest isn't a cruise through the gay park. To execute 2010's weeklong extravaganza, Hines spent a year brainstorming ways to not only intrigue donors but expose a hesitant audience to her lineup of emerging artists. "[Society] has become so busy that people are reluctant to support what's new," she says. "They only have interest in organizations that are very well established." If her time as a marketing mogul has taught her anything, it's to pique the curiosity factor just enough that it's hard not to want to see it for yourself. To that end, she's garnered international participation from a diverse crowd of LGBTQ and LGBTQ-supportive artists. Straight ally Hayley Varhol will be conducting the Philadelphia Freedom Band; QFest development director Thom Cardwell will don drag for the first time in a staged reading of The Women; and Canadian playwright Ian Mozdzen will present Infinity Land (pictured), a gritty theatrical production about gay serial killers that almost proved too explicit to make the cut. "Because of its graphic nature we had to do research to make sure it wouldn't offend obscenity laws," Hines says, smirking. "But we can do it because it's in the context of art."