The mission of this Portland, OR festival is to celebrate contributions of the LGBTQ community to the art of theatre by staging both original and classic works thus creating an incubator of new theatre for and by the LGBTQ community. After immense popular demand, Fuse rebranded it as the much more ambitious and inclusive OUTwright Theatre Festival. OUTwright’s 2018 production of Cabaret garnered 1
1 Portland Area Theatre Alliance Drammy Nominations and took home six awards including Outstanding Ensemble in a Musical and Outstanding Production of a Musical. In 2016, OUTwright's production of Under the Influence, by Ernie Lijoi, won the Drammy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Actor. Along with reconnecting us with classic LGBTQIA+ texts, OUTwright has paved the way for numerous scripts to receive fully staged productions at theatres across the world. This year’s Feature Production, The Pursuit of Happiness, by Portland’s own Ernie Lijoi, started out as a workshop in last year’s festival. 2014’s Animals Commit Su***de, by festival favorite J. Julian Christopher, has received full productions in NYC and Chicago. 2015’s workshop of How to be a Sissy, by Brian Haimbach, was selected to perform at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. OUTwright holds firm the belief that there is no greater canon of the LGBTQIA+ civil rights experience than the theatre. Our hope is to educate future generations on the struggles and successes of our predecessors by sharing these stories, both new and old, while also engaging our audiences in numerous outreach programs by providing workshops, panel discussions, and artistic opportunities.
