On its 5th Anniversary, the NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL is examining how issues of the intersection of race/culture and queerness can be expressed by the arts in our community. As a microcosm of the world, the Queer Community encompasses its full diversity; how we differ or mirror that larger world is the question that many of our artists have addressed for this festival. A large percentage of our events will focus on the construction of racial identity and/or racism from the queer artist's perspective. The artists mine the past and present and create a future to express their vision. These visions are, at times, hilarious and pointed in their satire, tragic or triumphant in their outcome, and always original as we have come to expect. Please visit somArts gallery for exhibition and panel discussions for the full FESTIVAL SCHEDULE and TICKETS contact www.queerculturalcenter.org; or phone NQAF: 415.865.5611; or e-mail NQAF@aol.com

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Sunday, June 2; 5-9pm
tickets: $10-$20

Map of a Virtual World: Voices and Visions of Queer Southwest Asian and North African People The Mujadarra Grrls Queer Arabia is a concept, a territory without a location, a virtual world. It's a world that is, for many reasons, invisible to most people. It's a world where many of us spend a lot of our time. We invite you to join local artists, activists, and revelers as we subvert language and images, wave our own flags, and celebrate our world. Panel discussion begins at 5pm. Art exhibition begins at 6pm. Open Mike/Performances begins at 7pm. Evening closes with a procession of flags. The event is a benefit for The Mujadarra Grrls, producers of Bint el Nas, www.bintelnas.org

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Wednesday, June 5; 8pm
Tickets: $12-15, Sliding Scale at the door

A Horrifying Benefit for Ladyfest Bay Area 2002 This benefit for Ladyfest Bay Area 2002 begins with a screening of Charm, the debut full-length feature film by underground filmmakers Sarah Reed and Sadie Shaw. Charm is a surreal film, its roots in the horror genre, about Rosie, who lashes out in an attempt to register some kind of reaction from the world around her. Ladyfest Bay Area (July 24-28) will feature women artists from all over the country to create conversation, interrogate boundaries, and forge bridges across class, race, culture, gender, sexuality, and genres. Ladyfest features music, visual arts, film/video, performance, and community-building workshops that will bring women and trans-identified people from all over the nation to showcase the artistic, organizational, and political achievements of women. Info: www.ladyfestbayarea.org

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Friday – Sunday, June 7-9; 8 pm
Tickets: $20

Single Wet Female
Marga Gomez and Carmelita Tropicana

Dueling divas Marga Gomez and Carmelita Tropicana play house in a low-rent thriller about perverted roommates. Single Wet Female drips with suspense while peeking into the intimate living arrangement of an average white chick and the desperate voyeur with back acne who answers her ad. This first-hand account of female passion includes bath scenes, death scenes, and simulated nudity that run through it like a river.
Single Wet Female marks the first professional collaboration between Carmelita Tropicana and Marga Gomez (who are not lovers). Both Ms. Tropicana and Ms. Gomez have dreamt of working together on an important script with positive female role models. Until they find that script, they will do Single Wet Female. After its debut at the 2002 National Queer Arts Festival, the show to New York for an October opening at Performance Space 122.

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Saturday, June 15; 8:30 pm
Tickets: $15-20 sliding scale

Cosmic Blood
Gigi Oltavaro and Emael

Cosmic Blood explores the concept of mestizaje, the Spanish term used to describe the race mixture of Spanish and indigenous blood as a result of colonialism, from a perspective informed by history, contemporary culture and racial formation and creative, spiritual speculation about the future. Otalvaro-Hormillosa weaves video, sound and performance to illustrate the contradictory aspects of mestizaje in which the genocide and rape of one race led to the creation of a new race. By redefining mestizaje to incorporate mixed race and queer identities that take on countless forms as in the case of multicultural San Francisco, Otalvaro-Hormillosa paints a picture of the revolutionary potential for such subversive, yet fluid identities to dismantle the binaries created by colonial constructs relating to race and gender. Theories of contact between ancient civilizations and extraterrestrials influence Otalvaro's artistic vision of a cosmic mestizaje. Sound Design by Melissa Dougherty. Cosponsored with QueLACo.

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Friday & Saturday, June 21 & 22; 8 pm
Tickets: $10-$20 sliding scale

DISPLACEMENT Sini Anderson, Marci Blackman , Kinnie Starr & Marcus Rene Van
Archival footage of the late Kris Kovick

Performance poet Sini Anderson takes the stage for Displacement, a muti-media spoken word performance that addresses displacement on many different levelsŃcommunity, gender, race, class, culture, body, mind, and religion. Joining Anderson are novelist and performance poet Marci Blackman, slam and performance poet Marcus Rene Van, and Vancouver recording artist Kinnie Starr. Displacement features special archival video footage of the late, great Kris Kovick. This show also features live sound scores, original video, still images from local sound artists, videographer, and photographers.

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Wednesday – Friday, June 26 – 28; 8 pm
Saturday, June 29; 2 pm
Tickets: $10-$20 sliding scale

... And You Can't Make Me: The Life and Music of Gladys Bentley Alison Wright This solo multi-media performance chronicles the story of Gladys Bentley, the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs," a cross-dressing lesbian Blues singer of the Harlem Renaissance. In top hat and tails, she "homophiled" the lyrics of popular songs, as well as writing her own. Audiences of politicians, European royalty, and high society followed Black and gay customers from Greenwich Village to Harlem just to experience La Bentley from 1925 to 1940. The House Un-American Activities Committee called her before Congress to recant her same-sex marriage in 1930, threatening to label her a deviant. This drama, woven together with Gladys Bentley songs and covers, presents a full evening of dazzling entertainment and thought provoking stories of this larger than life Blues icon.