The annual Fresh Fruit Festival, a celebration of LGBT Arts and Culture kicked off its sixth season with a showcase of Fruites (Festival participants) from the Past and Present performing their unique talent, offering a peek at what will be offered at Fresh Fruit 2008! The event took place on Friday, July 11 and I was the hostess and MC of the evening and was delighted to be reunited with some of friends and had the chance to meet some new creative individuals. The show took place in a theater in the Lincoln Center Barns & Noble bookstore. We were treated many wonderful performances including music by David Brown, comedy by Kelli Dunham, jazz performances by Rome Neal and Nhojj, scenes from Chip Deffaa's musical comedy Theater Boys with Tyler Etheridge and Tyler Watkins. Plus, we saw a scene from Linda Ann Loschiavo's play Courting Mae West with Yvonne Sayers as the title charact
er. Also the gorgeous Snahal Desai showed us some of his one-man performance of Finding Ways to Prove You're Not An Al-Quaeda Terrorist When You're Brown (And Other Stories Of The Gindian).The next evening, I MC-ed the Festival's Open Mic at the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe in the East Village where old friend Brian Masefield did some comedy and Jesse Archer from A Four Letter Word dropped by to see the show. Raven Hall co-hosted the evening and Sue Ellen Rubin, Carol Polcovar and Maggie Zarillo-Gouldin read some of their musings!
