Interview: Preview What's Coming Up at the 2021 Rogue Theater Festival

Rogue Theater Festival is back this year to make a wave with brand new works and playwrights! After the success of their hybrid festival last year, Rogue is excited to dive in head first and give three times as many talented writers the opportunity to showcase their work! Rogue is not only offering a safe experience for artists to film their plays in a theatrical setting, but also offering them the option to film on zoom, in their homes, or on a rooftop if they wish. Rogue is bringing over forty brand new plays, musicals, dance pieces, and monologues to life this month via showtix4u.

Not only has Rogue decided to offer even more playwrights the chance to showcase their work this year, they've also added a Playwright in Residence program. This program has offered five Rogue participants a scholarship for the festival and the opportunity to have their writing workshopped with New York City and Los Angeles based theater and film writers.

Click here to find out more about the festival and check out the interview below (with founder Allison Hohman, plus four of the playwrights) for a sneak peek!

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Congrats on the festival making it to the other side of the pandemic- that is an accomplishment in itself! Can you share some highlights on what is to come for 2021?

AH: Thank you! There were many twists and turns in the last year, but I'm proud to have found a way to present so many new works in this crazy time. Rogue Theater Festival definitely expanded this year! Last year being our trial run of a hybrid-style festival, we now were able to go into this years festival with confidence and the ability to take on even more plays and a few other new opportunities. This year we offered four playwright-in-residence positions for the first time. This has been a goal of mine since starting the festival in 2019, so I'm ecstatic it was something we were finally able to do! We also offered a few scholarships for the festival this year which was a completely on the spot decision, but something we hope to continue moving forward.

I understand that the programming will be presented hybrid-style this year...?

AH: Yes! It's a new frontier in the theater world. In 2020, we postponed our festival twice, hoping to keep it as a traditional in person festival, before realizing we either needed to adapt or cancel the festival completely. It only being our second year of presenting, I was eager to find a way to make it work and so.... our hybrid-style festival was born! We offer two options to our participants. Scenario A allows them to come into a theater space and present their play as normal. The only difference being there's no audience and we film the piece instead to be streamed on a later date. Scenario B allows the participants to film their piece remotely. They can do this over zoom, on location, in a different theater space....the options are limitless! in 2020 these options were created primarily with safety in mind. If groups didn't feel comfortable comfortable coming into a theater to film, they could send us something themselves. This year, however, while safety was still a main factor, we also discovered that presenting the festival this way allows us to open our doors to participants all over the globe! We have shows coming to us from California, Ohio, New Zealand, Michigan, and, of course, plenty from right here in New York City.

What has your experience been like creating this piece for the festival?

Jonathan G Galvez (The Return of the Christmas Stars): This is a piece I wrote a few years ago, and me and my team have been dying to put it up somewhere. Yes, it's a holiday show, but we were chomping at the bit to do, well, something, and we couldn't wait around for another opportunity to do this particular piece. This is my 8th time doing a festival, and every experience is different. This was even crazier, because no affordable rehearsal spaces were available (let alone open), resources were sparse, and with most of the cast in the service industry, balancing between making a check and making rehearsals added an extra layer. Coming out of the COVID era, there's such a survival mentality for those who've been out of work for a year. And part of that survival was being able to not only sustain oneself, but to create things, and connect with people once again. Me and my director/roommate/pinball hero actively chose actor friends we wanted to work with because if we were gonna get back into making theater, we wanted it to be an enjoyable experience with as little stress as possible.

Ray Jordan Achan (Diasporic Dreams From A Boy Who Wished He Could): This has been a really exciting piece to create for the festival because it is a semi-autobiographical piece that outlines an aspect of the Indo-Caribbean experience. There are very few shows that explore the nuances of this identity and highlight the intergenerational harm done to people of the Indian and Indo-Caribbean diaspora. I hope that in some ways this show educates audience members on what it means to be a Guyanese person; oftentimes what our "identity" is can be confusing and even traumatizing because it reminds us that our history is one of displacement and indentured servitude. I really enjoyed making this show because I was able to write, act and direct it. I had a wonderful cast and creative team that allowed me to exercise the full extent of my theatrical talents.

Dena Igusti (First Sight): I wrote FIRST SIGHT with the intention of highlighting the nuances of queer love and the troubling binary of being "out" or "not out." As an Indonesian queer person that is "out" to the public but "not out" to a lot of people in order to survive, I wanted to create a story based on a culmination of people who have had to navigate different expressions of queer love in the same ways I have. I wanted to explore a love that is beyond typical notions of what it means to be in a romantic relationship, and how that love is met with grief, migration, and imperialism.

Writing FIRST SIGHT felt vulnerable yet cathartic. Especially after a year of facing so much grief, writing this piece felt like I was commemorating the loved ones I lost recently and writing an ode to the ones who are still alive, all at once. Being a part of an amazing predominantly Southeast Asian and all Asian cast and crew was beautiful. Through the cast of Eirene Tuakora, Lei Nico, B Bastian, Sara Rahman, and Phoenix Na, the stories of my loved ones can live on beyond memory.

Rebecca Kane (Tight (Haha Nice)): I participated in Rogue back in 2019, and it was truly one of the best festival experiences I've ever had. When I heard both that it was coming back this year and that they were having a residency program, I absolutely could not wait to apply. It's been an honor to have my piece included in the festival, especially in this lineup -- every show I've read about sounds so interesting. I can't wait to check out the other shows.

After such a crazy year, how does it feel to be back creating art again?

DI: To be honest, I never really stopped creating art even during this past year, but I've learned to be more intentional about what I put out. Prior to everything, I only pushed things out just to say I have the accolade or the credit. While I still wrote with intention, I felt like my art career was a race and not a marathon. I learned the importance of slowing down and really taking time to make the best out of my work. I'm glad to get back to creating art in-person again, and putting my all into it.

JGG: We all cried at the first rehearsal. We all realized we were finally back in a room, creating art, and we got overwhelmed, not only by the idea of putting up a show, but that we were finally all together, in a room, vaccinated, among people we hadn't seen in person in a year. This is a show that rides the emotional spectrum, from funny to sad to ridiculous to dramatic, and getting to feel all of that, whether as an actor or as a producer, and going on that ride with other people physically in the room, was a grand feeling sorely missed by all. And now we're all looking for the next thing that we don't have to perform from our laptops. And while we don't get to see the audience this time, reacting to everything and riding the show with us, we anxiously await the next time we get a chance to be in front of a live audience. And if we're lucky enough, this Holiday show in the summer could find itself back on stage during the holidays. So, stay tuned.

RK: I'm absolutely loving the enthusiasm from other theatremakers and audiences about returning to some sense of normalcy in the theatre we create, but I also have immense appreciation for the way we've all managed to make art for the past year or so despite the endless obstacles. I look forward to aspects of virtual theatre that are here to stay!

RJA: After such a crazy year, it feels great to be creating art again. I am very grateful to be a Playwright-in-Resident at Rogue Theater Festival. At the beginning of the pandemic, I felt very hopeless in my career as an emerging artist. However, I was able to redirect my focus and double down on my love for theater and everything about it. I started a performance collective, EXILED TONGUES, which provides financial, artistic and collaborative support to QTBIPOC artists (artists of the global majority). Recently our shows have been featured at the The Tank, the Center at West Park, and the Prelude NYC Festival. Additionally, I am currently one of sixteen artists chosen to participate in "Tending the Edge: Caring for the NYC coastline and its communities now and in the future", an artistic project focused on bringing the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (CWP) into the public discourse, challenging mayoral candidates to engage issues of Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Planning, and inviting the public to take on the identity of waterfront citizens, by artistically engaging with these issues. For this project I am creating a documentary theater piece about the history of environmental violence at Newtown Creek, located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Utilizing archival photos, interviews and collaborations with community non-profit groups such as the Newtown Creek Alliance, I aim to draw public awareness to the Creek and advocate for it's cleanup. I am also an Associated Artist at Culture Push where I am developing a documentary theater piece about the North Brooklyn Pipeline, titled "Our Bang For Their Buck: No Permit for LNG.

In what ways do you hope to see the festival grow next year and years ahead?

AH: I am so excited with the growth we've had over these last two years, but with theaters reopening and performances beginning to be in person again, I plan to merge the two different types of festivals we've had so far to create a best of both worlds scenario. It has been so amazing to work with participants from all over, so we plan to keep the hybrid aspect alive. However, we also can't wait to be back in a theater with a live audience! In the years to come, Rogue plans to resume our original model of a traditional theater festival, but to keep the twist of our Scenario B option for those out of the city or who would prefer the streaming option. Who knows, maybe we'll even livestream our in person shows! We also plan to continue offering scholarships and to keep building the playwright-in-residence program. My goal is to make sure the festival is accessible to artists from all different backgrounds and with varied life experiences. Every artist brings something special and different to the festival, so keeping it open to all is extremely important.

What are you proudest of in looking at what Rogue Theater Festival has accomplished already?

AH: I'm most proud of the playwrights we've been able to work with and the opportunity we provided for them to share their work in a relaxed environment without having to shell out their life savings. Producing theater can be so expensive, so I believe that theater festivals are an incredible opportunity for playwrights to share and experience their work without breaking the bank. I've always described Rogue Theater Festival as a 'mom and pops' theater festival. This means that everything we do is to ensure the playwright and their team has a positive and artistically fulfilling experience. As we go into our third year, Rouge has worked with eighty-five playwrights and hundreds of actors, designers, etc. We are proud to be a festival that allows original voices to be heard and accepts works that range from a short clowning piece to a two and a half hour musical. Our main priority is providing a space for artists to share their work and I'm very proud to continue that for years to come.

What are you most looking forward to in the festival ahead?

AH: I'm most looking forward to watching all the various types of pieces we have! This year we have pieces that range from 5 minutes to 2 and a half hours long. Some of them are plays, some musicals, some monologues or poetry, some dance, some radio plays and the list goes on! My favorite thing about the festival is reading every single submission that comes through. It's incredible to see the various types of ways artists can express themselves and it's such an honor to present these works as part of a larger package. It also has been so delightful, both this year and last, to experience the pure joy participants have expressed when stepping foot into a theater to film their piece. It was an overwhelming reminder that we love what we do. I can't wait to share the fourty-four pieces we have this year.

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Learn more about the plays here and mark your calendars for Rogue Theater Festival, 2021 streaming July 19th-25th via ShowTix4U. And if you're not able to make the premiere, don't worry! Each show will be available on demand for a full week following the festival.