LGBQT festival announces full details.
The SHOUT Festival of Queer Arts and Culture returns to Birmingham next month to mark the fifth anniversary of the (partial) decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales.
Now in its eight year, SHOUT 2017 presents its biggest programme ever: a ten day festival presenting the best in queer and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans live performance, theatre, visual arts, comedy, music, and film at over twelve venues across the city. From vogueing to drag-king punk gigs, to a winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, SHOUT 17 celebrates LGBT and queer identities, voices, and fifty years of LGBT history.
The festival launch party will take place on Thursday 9th November with the unforgettable and legendary David Hoyle (left), who will open the festival with his latest show Diamond (mac Birmingham, 9th November). Weaving together intimate personal accounts and landmark events, Diamond charts David’s rise from a gay adolescent in Blackpool, through famous Channel 4 anti-drag queen cult phenomena Divine David, to the performer he is today.
Festival highlights will include Jinkx Monsoon, The Vaudevillians (Birmingham Hippodrome, Sunday 19th November). After selling out an often-extended off-Broadway run and an Australian tour, RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon arrives at SHOUT Festival with The Vaudevillians, a bawdy, rowdy musical comedy co-starring composer and musician Major Scales. It’s a vintage cabaret with a twist of drag.
Bristol based Rachael Clerke and The Great White Males will present Cuncrete (A.E. Harris, Saturday 18th November) – a loud, hilarious, and raucous no-wave, drag-king, punk-gig musical about architecture, idealism and how we ended up in this mess. Hosted by washed up architect/ proto-god figure Archibald Tactful (2014 IdeasTap Underbelly winner Rachael Clerke) with house band The Great White Males, Cuncrete is a gratuitously sleazy and joyfully noisy critique of alpha-masculinity and the built environment.
We Often Find It Necessary to Keep Our Homosexuality Quiet (mac Birmingham, Saturday 4th November-Tuesday 2nd January 2018) is an exhibition of documentary photography, charting the history of the Gay Liberation Front in Birmingham in the 1970s. Told through the camera lens of one member, Ian Sanderson, We Often Find It Necessary to Keep Our Homosexuality Quiet (titled after the opening line of the Birmingham GLF Manifesto) is an intimate and powerful snapshot into our city’s queer history.
Adam Carver, SHOUT Festival Producer, said, “We are so excited and proud to bring this programme of internationally renowned artists to Birmingham. There are several new commissions in amongst some of the best in theatre, performance, visual art, and film celebrating queer identities, exploring our heritage, and directly responding to the world in which we find ourselves today. We can’t wait to share it with everyone!”
The festival will take place in venues across Birmingham. See the festival website for further details www.shoutfestival.co.uk.
Cover pic – Paul Samuel White.