RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com
Last summer, Badge Of Pride made a unmistakeable impression with its premiere exhibition From Silence…To Celebration! at the Irving Archives and Museum. It was an unprecedented collection of artifacts, photographs, letters and ephemera drawn from more than 10,000 items, and it was the largest collection of queer history ever presented in Texas.
As part of that run, BOP teamed with The Writer’s Garret for a poetry event surrounding original pieces inspired by an item on exhibit. Now BOP and Writer’s Garrett are teaming up again for a new series of staged readings called CORRESPONDENCE: Letters of Queer Resistance, Love & Revolution.
Curated and co-written by Adrian Cardwell, founder and executive director of Badge Of Pride, and Aaron Glover, executive director of The Writer’s Garret, the series draws on letters, speeches, essays, manifestos and personal writing from throughout LGBTQ+ history, and it features new material by local queer voices.
Staged by Glover, performances bring the texts out of history and off the page for contemporary relevance.
“We created a series of three performances, all in partnership with The Writer’s Garret and all at Bishop Arts Theatre Center,” Cardwell said. “What we want to do with these events is activate that sense of queer lineage and cultural inheritance.”
The first installment is titled “We Are Everywhere.” Built entirely from letters, speeches, essays and other written works by queer writers, activists and artists of different generations, this installement of the series serves as a declaration.
“This shows how we have declared our identity and said to the world who we are,” Cardwell explained. “This takes those queer letters and speeches and remixes them into a sort of conversation with each other. It will show how these messages are relevant to us today and not something stuck in the past.”
A curated panel of readers will bring each of these pieces to life on March 18 at the Oak Cliff theater beginning at 7:30 p.m. The event will include reading performances by Crush, DR Mann Hanson, Quintin Jones Jr. and Jennifer Pickert with a music performance by Rachel Gollay.
“We wanted to find folks who had an established body of performance work. And they’ve all found these beautiful ways to bring these words to life,” Cardwell said.
Each event will have different readers. The second installment will be “The Love That Dares” on May 6, centering on queer love, intimacy and devotion across generations. This performance will kick off Dallas Is Lit! Literary Festival by The Writer’s Garret.
The final installment is titled “A Manifesto For Us All.” It is scheduled for July 29 and will focus on the language of liberation and collective action derived from historic queer manifestos.
“This project asks what happens when queer people speak for themselves across time,” Cardwell concluded. “You are no longer reading about Queer history. You are sitting with it in real time, alongside other people. You hear the courage, the hesitation, the longing and the distance between generations begin to collapse.”
For tickets or more information, visit BadgeofPride.org.