Jul 03, 2009  |  By: Patrick Folliard  | COMMENTS     

It’s July. Theatrically speaking that can mean only one thing — the Capital Fringe Festival.

Throughout the month, solo artists and small companies encouraged by the festival’s support will strive to wow D.C. audiences with a slew of inexpensively produced, sometimes nontraditional performances including theater, dance, music, poetry, puppetry and more. The annual festival not only provides an accessible forum for participants to mount productions that otherwise might not be seen but also supplies a built-in audience and venues — now all located within three city blocks between Penn Quarter and Mount Vernon Square.

The results are insanely uneven but almost always entertaining, and the price is right. Most tickets go for $15. Some of this year’s festival’s more than 120 entries feature gay artists and contain gay and lesbian subject matter.

In his 75 minute solo show, “My Fabulous Sex Life,” Brent Stansell covers a lot of personal sexual terrain including kissing guys for the first time in college, assorted “fuck buddies,” and risky behavior in New York City sex clubs.

“Since I came out at 18,” says Stransell, 26, “I’ve had all kinds of sex with all kinds of people and my intention with the show is to take the audience on a journey through it all — pleasurable, scary and questionable.”

“I haven’t had a lot of relationships, but I’ve had a lot of gay sex,” Stansell says, and now he’s prepared to share those experiences with anyone who is willing to pony up the $15 and listen. 

“My close friends won’t be shocked at what they’re going to hear at the show. It’s the more peripheral acquaintances in attendance I’m concerned about. They might be a little surprised.”

Stansell began working on “My Fabulous Sex Life” while earning a master’s in dramaturgy at Brooklyn College. For some time he’d been thinking about writing his coming out story, but as time and hookups transpired, Stansell decided to spin an altogether different kind of yarn and then subsequently worked it into a show.   

The local actor, dramaturge and acting teacher, who’s single, is dubious as to how the show might bear on his dating future. He says friends predict it can go either way: Sharing the inside skinny on his many and varied trysts might work like a tantalizing personal ad, or it might simply scare guys off. Stansell isn’t optimistic, but he’s jumping in feet first nonetheless.

“No one can say for sure how all this is going to play out” he says. “But that’s the exciting, unpredictable nature of theater.” 

“FlagBoy,” another solo show Fringe entry, also is gay-themed. Written and performed (13 parts) by African-American actor/playwright/ activist Cornelius Jones Jr., the coming-of-age story retraces the author’s youth as he moves from Richmond to D.C. to New York City.

Jones’ show is broad in scope. You meet him as a 6 year old dabbling in his mother’s jewelry and makeup. He’s obsessed with Diana Ross and her hit “Muscles.” As a teen, he leaves Richmond for D.C. to attend Duke Ellington School of the Arts but runs into trouble with his host family when they discover he’s gay. In college, he’s gutted by his HIV diagnosis but refuses to give up.   

“My story is about a little gay boy searching for a place to belong, somewhere that he can be comfortable,” says Jones, 31. “It seems I was always negotiating my identity, ducking in and out of the closet, running into problems, but then finding support and purpose from the people around me. Throughout it all, I’m pushing forward. Our life is like a book, and luckily we’re all the author of [our] own book. We have the ability to write our own stories.”

“There are advantages to the solo show. Typically, the audience is willing to excuse your flubs,” Jones says. “It’s as if they say, ‘This is your journey and I’m with you.’ It’s not the same when you’re acting in someone else’s play. You’re held accountable for so much more.”

Rick Hammerly, a gay Helen Hayes Award-winning actor, is producing the John Moletress-directed production of “4.48 Psychosis,” a poetic exploration of depression and suicide by the late lesbian playwright Sarah Kane. Both Hammerly and Moletress are members of Factory 449, a newly formed theater collective made up of a dozen local theater vets. “4.48 Psychosis” is the group’s first production.

“The collective is intrigued by this play about suicide written by a young woman who went on to end her own life,” Hammerly says. “Mounting ...