Is it now harder to find the edge?
A queer festival is making its way in a changed post-election world
The final event in this year's Out on the Edge Festival of Queer Theater opened at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, less than 24 hours after the polls closed on a historic Election Day.
Given the mood of the room - joy and a little disbelief at Barack Obama's victory, anger and sorrow at the passage of California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage - it was only natural to think about just where the "edge" is now, in 2008, and how much it has or hasn't moved in the 17 years that The Theater Offensive has produced this festival.
It's true that some key lyrics in that night's show at the Boston Center for the Arts - "Wake the F**k Up America," by the dragapella quartet the Kinsey Sicks - are still beyond the pale of what can appear in most newspapers. So are the full details of some of the show's numbers, involving a sheaf of fake pubic hair, a bestiality skit, and a song about urine. But a lot of the Sicks' jokes about politicians, right-wing lunatics, and pop culture would fit right in on "The Daily Show" or "Saturday Night Live." If it can go on the air, is it still out on the edge?
The Sicks themselves seemed a little thrown by this relocation of the mainstream, or perhaps by the novelty of the day itself: Their Sarah Palin jokes already felt, inevitably and through no fault of theirs, a bit stale. Why keep kicking someone who's already been, as Jon Stewart would say the next night, tagged and released back into the wild?
Well, because it's fun, maybe, and also because there's that nagging fear that she's not gone for good. But the Palin bits were only one instance of a larger issue: How does politically oriented, countercultural theater adapt and change when the culture itself takes a turn (even if it may only be temporary, and only partial) for the better?
For some earlier parts of the festival, such questions were less pressing - and probably would have been even if they'd been staged after the election, as a performance like drag diva Varla Jean Merman's or the Bang Group's "Nutcracker" remix "Nut/Cracked" is less overtly political than the Sicks' satire of a conservative morning talk show. But Varla did conclude her show, which featured her in outfits from various nations, with a hilarious number about pretending to be Canadian while abroad. Hmm, guess she won't have to worry about that anymore.
The longtime feminist lesbian performance group Split Britches, meanwhile, focused on the more personal side of the political equation in a diffuse but sometimes powerful satire, "Miss America." References to a Katrina-like storm, a sendup of beauty pageants, and a pervasive fascination with interactive media all combined to create a current and yet timeless mood of bemused disconnection from the larger culture. If it wasn't always clear from the striking but disconnected images and vignettes just what the performers were up to, it was clear that a lot of their targets, from sexism to class discrimination, won't be going away any time soon.
In general, this year's festival felt a bit lighter than some previous versions. There's always plenty of joyously subversive silliness at Out on the Edge, but usually there's more serious work on hand, too.
In fairness, I didn't see any of this year's staged readings of new local plays, and I also missed out on the discussions and talkbacks that are an important part of The Theater Offensive's programming. That's a mistake I won't make again next year, because it's the commitment to involving the community and to finding ways of blending performance and conversation that makes this a particularly valuable and rewarding festival.
As a matter of fact, that might be part of the answer to the question of how to stay "on the edge" even when it's moving. If the performers this year didn't know exactly how their political jokes would land in the wake of historic change, neither do any of us. By next year's festival, perhaps, it will be clearer what issues remain and how art, specifically theater, can address them; it would be great to see more deep political analysis mixed in with the feathers and stilettos. In the meantime, we can be grateful to The Theater Offensive for continuing to provide an opportunity for such conversations. It's a real gift to the community.
You might even call it a political act.
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com. 