Festival to soldier on despite opposition to gay artists

By Larry Nichols
PGN Staff Writer
© 2008 Philadelphia Gay News

Organizers of a festival to promote unity and performing arts in Delaware have been forced to make changes under pressure from local government.

The Unicity Performing Arts Festival is an all-day event set for Aug. 2 with the goal of uniting people through the performing arts.

The festival, which organizers hope will become an annual event, features a multicultural and diverse lineup of bands, dance troupes, comedians and performance artists from the region and across the country.

Two of the acts booked for the festival in particular have Middletown’s Town Council voicing concerns.

Out performers Sandra Bernhard and John Waters were both scheduled to perform their acts at the festival in a large tent in a parking lot downtown.

Even though the festival attractions, including the tent, are closed to the public and tickets must be purchased to see those artists, town officials and local merchants objected to Waters’ and Bernhard’s adult-oriented content and the possibility that they could be heard outside the tents.

The festival organizers said that while some of the acts they booked aren’t for every audience, there are plenty of G-rated attractions as well.

“We have a bunch of family-friendly acts and we have a lot of children that are performing,” said Michel Grey, founder and talent coordinator for the festival.

Grey also defended booking the more adult-oriented acts.

“We don’t censor the acts, but what we’ve done is we have a rating system on the map and the schedule,” she said.
As a result of the controversy, Waters’ performance of his one-man show, “This Filthy World,” has been moved indoors to The Premier Centre for the Arts, 27 Anderson St., which holds only 80 people compared to the 1,600 the tent would have accommodated.

The venue change and the budgetary constraints of having to move to a smaller venue also forced organizers to cut Bernhard from the festival.

Grey said she and her colleagues are determined to make it work despite the obstacles.

“We have met with some contention this year that I did not see coming,” she said. “I thought that bringing an event into town would only be a positive thing. But unfortunately, any time you try to do something new and different, you’re always going to have people that don’t want change and keep things exactly as they have been. We’ve being trying to counter that by saying, ‘OK, don’t come, but we’re doing it.’ You can’t please everybody all the time.

“Some places that were blatantly open to rent they would not rent to us,” added Grey. “There were some places that said we could rent, but then they wanted us to submit an artist roster of who was specifically performing in their locations. Basically we decided to take it out of every room except for one. The other locations are in tents on parking lots that we have gotten permission from.”

The Unicity Festival starts at 11 a.m. Aug. 2 in Middletown, Del. For more information and a full listing of scheduled artists, visit www.unicityfestival.com.

Jen Colletta can be reached at jen@epgn.com.