Looking Around, In LA and Online

A friend of mine recently asked me what the cool upcoming queer performance was on my radar. What am I excited about? Who's the next Tim Miller or Kate Bornstein, WOW Cafe or Five Lesbian Brothers? What is worth making an effort to go see? Are there cool queer and transgendered young performance artists? People who confront gender issues head-on and coherently? And I was woefully inadequate in answering him. I can talk about the performers I've seen recently: Turner Schofield (solo performance), Katastrophe (rap), Sean Dorsey(dance), the Butchlalis(performance art), all of whom I would go out of my way to see and recommend to others.

In the not all transguys category, there are performers I've heard about and feel like I should see: Hanifah Walidah, Heather Gold, Renita Martin, Devil Bunny. I've heard that Letta Neely has the makings of a great playwright. I'm curious about what Vivan Babuts would come up with in a live show. A friend has recommended S. Bear Bergman and Kristina Wong.

And these are the things I'm seeing in the next two weeks or so:

Hyperbole:epiphany at Son of Semele. Not particularly queer, but interesting concept. The show is composed of a lot of short pieces with no dialogue and no actors' faces. There are masks and puppets and each piece is set to and inspired by music. Through this Saturday, Sept. 3

The Rocky Horror Picture Show at The Hollywood Bowl. Monday, Sept. 5.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence present Red Leather Riding Hood: an evening of fetish fairytales at Highways. Sept. 8-11.

I Am My Own Wife at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. Through Sept. 11.

Oklahomo! at Third Stage in Burbank. 10pm on Friday, Sept. 23.

But my question is what am I missing out on? Where does one find out about these things? I'm on mailing lists for several artists, the Cavern Club Theater and Highways in LA, Theatre Rhino in SF and Theater Offensive in Boston, but I want more. I want people to come here to LA so I don't spend so much time hearing about things that make me wish I wish I were in SF or NY or even Boston or Chicago or Atlanta or anywhere else. I want to see new cool queer performance artists and I want their information to come to me. I want to know where to look for these things. Perhaps it comes from talking to Prophecyboy too much, but I feel like all of these people could be doing so much better in terms of making themselves accessible to me. I know that they can only perform where people book them and will pay them, but so many of them don't even have websites. I might be a little crazy, but I'm willing and open to become a huge fan of some pretty wacky things at this point in my life; I'm looking for new experiences and artists and I want recommendations. What's going on that makes people really excited? What am I missing? Where are the cool new artists found, anyway. I know that with a band, they send demos to record labels, perform in bars, and self-promote on Myspace, but what about performance artists? Where are they and does anyone care but me? I worry that I'm only talking to myself and not finding anything cool and new.

So, if anyone's reading this, send me your recommendations. Tell me what's going on and what you like and what I should know about. Where and how do cool queer performance artists publicize themselves? How do I hear about them? Bonus points for cool artists that have a blog, or even and e-mail list, so I can find out where and when they're playing. I'll try to keep doing the same for new performers when I hear about them.