Rain rain go away cause it’s HOT! at Dixon Place. That would be the Hot! Festival—kicking off tonight with the Bindlestiff Open Stage Variety Show. Dixon’s annual queer “theater, music, dance, literature and homoeroticism for the whole family” festival that has been showcasing the work of the proudest and outest queers, lesbian, gays and otherwise for 22 years now. 
Times sure flies; it seems like only yesterday that Dixon Place founder and impresario, Ellie Covan, started giving queer artists the opportunity to take center stage. Today, the HOT! Festival can proudly boast being the oldest continually running GBLTQ festival around — and it’s a model for numerous queer festivals across the globe.
Tuesday’s HOT! Festival Opening Night Party is free, and a great chance to catch sneak peaks of upcoming HOT! shows. Five dollar cocktail specials run all night long. Plus, if you are one of the first fifty people to get there, you will get a free “Sexy Swag Bag” filled with HOT! summer loot from Gun Oil, Max Pro Condoms, Mount Airy Casino, Eboost, Daddy Hunt, Good Clean Love, and many more. The party starts at 7:30pm and is hosted by Dandy Darkly & Robbyne Kaamil.
With a $60 festival pass—one of the best theater bargains in town, you can see all HOT! shows, including the 2013 Hot! Festival world premiere of The Loudest Show On Earth! starring the controversial queer comic Lea DeLaria and her sidekick, Maggie Cassella.
Dixon Place HOT! Festival // 161 A Chrystie Street // Through August 3rd // For a complete schedule and ticket prices, visit hotfestival.org
