Dixon Place Announces HOT! NYC Celebration of Queer Culture Highlights

Hailed as "The best LBGTQ Theater Festival in New York" by The Village Voice, HOT! The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture returns to Dixon Place for its 27th season. The oldest festival of its kind in the world, HOT showcases over 100 artists' most daring new work in theatre, dance, music, puppetry, literature, visual arts, and homoeroticism for the whole family! Tickets, ranging from free to $21, can be purchased from the Festival page at http://dixonplace.org/category/hot-festival/ or by calling 866-811-4111. All performances are at Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street, in Manhattan's lower east side.

Founded by artistic director Ellie Covan in 1992, Dixon Place is proud to carry on the tradition of the HOT! Festival, serving as both a model for LGBTQ+ programs and festivals around the world, and a local artistic refuge for the most passionate and diverse voices in the NYC community. Over the years, HOT! has included such notable performers as Marga Gomez, Justin Vivian Bond, John Fleck, Kate Bornstein, Lisa Kron, Lea DeLaria, Penny Arcade, Craig Lucas, Samuel R. Delaney, Eileen Myles, and Peggy Shaw, to name a few.

This year, Timothy DuWhite's Neptune, directed by Zhailon Levingston, headlines the festival with its three-week world premiere production, developed during a residency at Dixon Place over the last nine months. Neptune is the sexy bedtime story of a young, black, queer, HIV positive boy exploring what it means to be "hard to love." A poetic, contemporary spin on the fairytale tradition, the play takes us on a journey through our shared complexities and imagines a space created for all who feel too traumatized, hurt, and fearful to be loved.

July 13, 14, 21, 28 at 7:30 p.m. and July 20, 27 at 10:00 p.m. on the Mainstage

Glace Chase, the award winning multi-disciplinary drag performer / playwright / comedian / screenwriter is stuck in the space-time continuum, forced to cure the lovesickness of the people she now inhabits in Love Criminal. Glace hosts and performs across NYC, including Neurotica at Metropolitan Bar, Singaling comedy karaoke at Belle Reve, and Disgustation at Rosemont. Her acclaimed LGBTQ+ walking tour, Dream Queen Tours, won the 2018 Intl. Tourism & Hospitality Awards' Best Alternative Tour.

July 5 at 7:30 p.m. in The Lounge

Sarah Cook directs Sara Kommer's An Untitled Play About Sluts where Kris, Eyeball, Baby, and Lane are a quartet of techno heathens in Berlin, trying to keep the party bumpin' despite queer loneliness, suicidal thoughts, abusive men, Jesus, and Tomorrow knocking on the door. Cook most recently directed the new plays book club. by Nazareth Hassan and Living and Dying and Being Dead by Amelia French at Dixon Place. She also directed the workshop production of An Untitled Play About Sluts at Playwrights. Sara Kommer is a playwright-performer-painter-poet who has previously directed Offending the Audience and led a workshop of An Untitled Play About Sluts at Playwrights Horizons Downtown. Acting credits include 50 Shades of Graves, Etta/Nicki, Caesar, and Legitatrash (TSOA 48 Hour Film Festival Best Actress Winner).

July 6 at 10:00 p.m. on the Mainstage

M. Lamar, who "plumbs the depths of all-American trauma with visionary verve" (NY Times), presents American Cuck, a new performance work that places the alt-right obsession with cuckolding into historical context. M. Lamar is a composer who works across opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. Lamar's work has been presented internationally at venues such as Old First Church (SF), The Meet Factory (Prague), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), and Merkin Hall (NYC).

July 12 at 10:00 p.m. on the Mainstage

Reno, an opinionated, radical feminist alternative voice who creates heavily improvised stream-of-consciousness topical monologues with incredible wit, political consciousness and common sense, presents her new work, Ignorance Is No Excuse. Starting with her first HBO comedy hour, Reno In Rage And Rehab, through her HBO feature film, Reno Finds Her Mom, her Bravo series, Citizen Reno, to her live show commissioned by Hartford Stage, The God Show, Reno wrestles with the "way it is" and points to the "way it's supposed to be."

July 18 at 7:00 p.m. in The Lounge

SHABOOM! Paul Soileau, an artist best known for his alter egos CHRISTEENE and Rebecca Havemeyer, Silky Shoemaker, founder of GAYBIGAYGAY Fest and curator of the Gay Wax Museum, and Lex Vaughn, a multi-disciplinarian artist whose work revolves around queer absurdity and butch visibility join forces for SHABOOM!, a spectacle teetering at the edge of disaster. SHABOOM! is theatre for the masses that forces culture and critique through the clown horn of queer slapstick - the hotdog in a haystack you have been searching for.

July 20 at 7:30 p.m. on The Mainstage

Neil Goldberg presents Inhibited Bites, a revelatory, darkly-comedic performance built from more than a thousand index cards containing thoughts, observations, and reflections jotted down over many years. For this return performance at Dixon Place, Goldberg, whose work is described by Time Out New York as "some of the most quietly intense and affecting art of his generation," will use the cards as the basis for both an improvised monologue and expansive interviews with special guests around queer themes.

July 23 at 7:30 p.m. on The Mainstage

Cecilia Gentili presents The Knife Cuts Both Ways, developed during a 2018 DP residency. When the judge gave the verdict: "Ms. Gentili, I am going to allow you to stay in the US under a full asylum," Ms. Gentili couldn't wait to go back to Argentina. Returning would be awesome, weird, sad and fun. And it would reveal how a "New York downtown transsexual sweetheart" was made from an ugly Argentinean birthplace. Ms. Gentili performed in Casey Llewellyn's O Earth with HERE and at Dixon Place in Jess Barbagallo's My Old Man. Originally from Argentina, Gentili worked as an intern at the LGBT Center where she found her passion for advocacy and services. She currently serves as the Director of Public Affairs at GMHC. A contributor to Trans Bodies Trans Selves and a collaborator with Translatina Network, she also loves doing storytelling events where she talks about her life experiences.

July 24, 25 at 7:30 p.m. and July 26 at 9:30 p.m. on the Mainstage

For a full festival line-up, visit http://dixonplace.org/category/hot-festival/. The Dixon Place Lounge is open before and after all the shows, with proceeds directly supporting the organization's artists and mission.

An artistic incubator since 1986, Dixon Place is a Bessie and Obie Award-winning non-profit institution committed to supporting the creative process by presenting original works of performance, literature, and visual art at all stages of development. Dixon Place features a state-of-the-art 130 seat mainstage theatre, a cozy lounge serving as a Second Stage, a gallery, and the only full bar in NYC where every purchased drink directly supports the organization's mission and artists. Presenting over 700 artists each year, this local haven inspires and encourages diverse artists of all stripes and callings to take risks and push personal and professional limits. Dixon Place's foremost priorities are to serve as a safety net for artists, and to provide vivid experiences for audiences.

Dixon Place is located at 161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey), in Manhattan's Lower East Side (By subway: B/D to Grand, F to 2nd Ave, J/Z to Bowery, 6 to Spring St, M to Essex St).

www.dixonplace.org