Our Readers Voice Awards issue is out now, and you see what won all the favorites of our readers — from favorite personal trainer to hottest bartender to top local chef — but there’s also tons more going on in town this week.

Friday, you have two chances to see Del Shores’ one-man show at the Rose Room — at 5 p.m. and then at 8 — which will be recorded for an upcoming DVD release. Standing-room-only tickets are available for as little as $10, but if you are one of the first 10 people to email kristamartinpr@gmail.com, you can win free tickets to the show. Also at the Rose Room for two shows this week? Comedian Bruce Vilanch. He’ll be performing March 28 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

On Saturday night, DIFFA returns with its second year featuring smoking jackets. Once again, runway legend Jan Strimple is in charge of the show, so it should be a hoot. It’s at the Anatole starting at 6 p.m. You can also get your fashion fix this week at Legal Hospice of Texas’ Fashion Cited event and Dress 4 Yellow, both next Thursday.

On Sunday morning, the inaugural Big Gay Brunch Party gets going at Blue Mesa Grill in Addison, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with DJ Michael Evans spinning.

Two indie theaters have very gay-themed plays opening this week. Up in Addison, MBS Productions is staging the original work The Futility of Hope, pictured, about a teenage girl who seeks out her birth father, only to be shocked to find out he’s a gay man. Over at the Green Zone near the Design District, Bruce Coleman has written and directed two one-acts he collectively calls The Apartment Plays: A Conversation with a (Potentially) Naked Man and Larry Kramer Hates Me. And at the Kalita for a one-night-only event you can see old-school DTC veterans Carole Cook and Tom Troupe in a staged reading of the Pulitzer-winning play The Gin Game on Monday at 7 p.m.

MARK LOWRY  | Special Contributor
marklowry@theaterjones.com

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QLIVE: NONE OF THE ABOVE
Trinity Bicycles patio,
207 S. Main St., Fort Worth.
Sept. 23–24 at 8 p.m.
$15, QCinema.org

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Anyone who’s ever wanted to start a theater company will tell you that the biggest hurdle is finding the right space. It’s no different in DF-Dub, where the opportunities seem endless, but affordable spaces that can work for the demands of theater are limited.

QLive!, a new theater company based in Fort Worth, is finding ways to work around that. Its first full production, for instance, is None of the Above , a two-person drama by Jenny Lyn Bader. It opens Friday on the back patio of a bicycle shop just west of downtown Cowtown.

“One of the things we’ve talked about is the immersive experience, where it’s not just that you sit down and watch a show, but you experience a show,” says QLive’s Todd Camp, who founded Fort Worth’s LGBT film festival, Q Cinema. “The three shows that we have lend themselves quite well to that.”

Those three shows, which run this fall, begin with Above, which deals with a parochial school student and her teacher. In November, there’ll be Yasmina Reza’s oft-produced Art, which will hopefully happen in a gallery space (they’re still negotiating). It will close out the year with Terrence McNally’s controversial Corpus Christi, taking place in a machine shop near downtown Fort Worth.

QLive! has been a project three years in the making, and will be led by Camp’s Q Cinema cohort Kyle Trentham, as artistic director. The group has already launched a successful Tuesday night open mike comedy event at Percussions Lounge, and in February presented a staged reading of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Spring Awakening, the day before the musical based on that play opened at Bass Performance Hall. They also brought Hollywood comedy writer Bruce Vilanch in for a one-night performance.

Like other arts groups with a large LGBT following that present works of interest to that community — including Uptown Players and the Turtle Creek Chorale — Trentham says QLive doesn’t want the label of “gay theater” … despite the big “Q” in its name.

“Young [audiences] don’t think in those terms anymore,” he says. “They just want to see theater they like.”

With Corpus Christi, Trentham says that creating an immersive experience will be crucial to the production. “It’s a working machine shop,” he says. “You walk in and the actors are working, getting their hands dirty. Then in the cleansing scene, they actually are cleaned.”

Camp, who has led Q Cinema for 13 years, is no stranger to controversy. He was a critical player in the late ‘90s “Labor of Love” project at the now-defunct Fort Worth Theatre. That group presented shows like Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, and Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band. A few times, there were protesters in front of the performance space, Orchestra Hall.

Considering the dust-up Corpus Christi caused in Texas last year when a Tarelton State University junior had his student production of it canceled, Camp is prepared for blowback.

“You are not going to tell me what I can and cannot do in my town, even if you’re the lieutenant governor,” he says. “This is an important work by a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who’s from Texas. … It’s an incredibly pro-spiritual show. It’s not anti-religion or blasphemous. It takes organized religion, which has been used to club the gay and lesbian community for many years, and retells the story that makes it a little more compatible and open to them.”

For now, they’ll have to see how their audience deals with a show outside a bike shop.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 23, 2011.

Bus tours and hosted walking tours of cities are popular ways to learn what sights and stops to hit, but technology is making human contact so less relevant. GPSmyCity.com has developed smartphone apps for 180 international cities — with some gay hubs having gay-specific apps: Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Orlando,

Acapulco, Vancouver, Madrid, even Houston. The apps offer everything from “gay nightlife of B.A.” to “top-rated gay venues of Vancouver” and “LGBT entertainment in Madrid.” The apps cost from $3–$5 per destination.

Dallas Pride officially lasts only until Sunday, but you can road-trip it to nearby Shreveport, La., for a week-long film festival of queer cinema.

PACE (People Acting for Change and Equality) hosts its third annual North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Sept. 16–22 at its artsy Robinson Film Center. The festivities include an opening night appearance by Bruce Vilanch, who will introduce the documentary Get Bruce.  Other films screening over the course of the fest include Undertow, pictured, Wish Me Away and Thy Will Be Done. Visit RobinsonFilmCenter.org, NLGLFF.org and PaceLouisiana.org for more.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition September 16, 2011.