Kelsy Chauvin

Relive your twisted childhood here!

Why can't be Women's Week be every week?

The musical Lesbian Love Octagon is set in the 1990s—“a righteous time in lesbian history,” reads the program. But the average lezzie probably couldn’t tell whether this was then or now, considering the dependable dyke drama that, to this day, still continually rears its faux-hawked head in our community.

Whether by sun or searchlights, everything seems brighter in West Hollywood. Though they do their best to play it cool behind their designer sunglasses, the lesbians in this legendary Los Angeles gayborhood spend just as much time scoping the eye candy as an average Jo visiting from near or far.

It’s an already amusing, peculiar and raunchy film, but somehow the new off-off-Broadway Showgirls: The Musical! manages to make it an even more hilarious, inventive and twisted experience. The 90-minute production premiered at New York’s Kraine Theatre on April 17th, the first of a 12-night run over the next three weekends.

Vintage, Jazz-Age fashion was all the rage at the premiere Dandy/Ette party on March 28th, at the velvet-curtained Manderley Bar in the McKittrick Hotel. Hosted by Emily Hall Smith’s Boy Wonder Events, the event brought together New York City’s most elegant ladies (and gentlemen) who love ladies and other dapper dykes and dandies for throwback cocktails, music and a special, sultry performance by Ani Taj and The Dance Cartel.

Break out your waistcoats, garters and bowties, because this Thursday, March 28th, New York’s transcendently vintage Manderley Bar will turn magically dandy. Or rather, Dandy/Ette.

In Commencing, a blind date gone wrong is the tie that brings leery lesbian Arlin to the door of ostensibly hetero Kelli, played by Emily Tuckman and Sarah E. Jacobs. This hour-long contribution to the 2013 FRIGID New York Festival is an attempt to uncover another layer of understanding between two women who are unexpectedly intrigued and challenged by one another. Unfortunately, it ends up playing more like a lesbian - 101 guidebook for those toeing the queer waters via indie theater.

New York City’s annual FRIGID Festival is underway this month, bringing more than 150 independent-theater performances to three downtown stages in just 12 days. Like all great Fringe Festivals, the lineup spans the zany and twisted, and the serious and thoughtful.

Last Sunday in Los Angeles it was sunny and warm, especially for a January afternoon. Two women went for a stroll in the park. They sat in the grass. They kissed. Sounds lovely right? Like something any of us would probably prefer to do, rather than working, attached to a digital device. Ah, but not true of the creepy photographer who hid across the lawn with a zoom lens, snapping pictures of said women.

Declarations customarily pack the most punch when they deliver new, potent information. They are strengthened when they shed new light on a context or experience. Yet sometimes neither of these criteria are met, and still a statement can make one’s heart sing or jaw drop, or both.

A fun part of an already hilarious production often comes by way of imagination of what exists outside the setting. In 1956 suburbia, for example, it would be of great amusement to know that there was a real Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein, and that they really did worship the egg as a covert symbol of their proper-yet-jolly lesbianism.