7 queer happenings you can’t miss at this year’s FringeArts Festival

Growing Into My Beard: I've Seen The Future

A coming-out and coming-of-age story, "Growing Into My Beard" has 11 performances at four different venues all around Philadelphia throughout the festival. Singer-songwriter Bay Bryan's comedy combines live music and personal narrative into a "dreamy blend of storytelling and performance art, with just a dash of drag."

Chronicling Bay's life from childhood to falling in love, "Growing Into My Beard" is an embracing tale for anyone who has ever felt - even a little bit - queer at heart. "It's told through original songs - Bay is a singer-songwriter and composer - as well as sporadic bouts of modern dance, drag, and one outstanding Beyoncé impression, " the show's director and producer Artem Yatsunov told me. "It's, above all, a triumph of gay identity and a celebration of all things queer."

Begins Sept. 3rd at Tabu Sports Bar and Lounge (200 South 12th St.). For more information, visit here.

Sit Down. Stand Up.

"Sit Down. Stand Up." is a story about love, loss and every emotion in between inspired by the Radiohead album Hail to the Thief. "Using pedestrian gesture and contemporary dance, we created a narrative that anyone who's ever been in love can relate to," Leslie Davidson, one of the performers and choreographers of the piece, told me. "The intimacy of the venue, along with the connection between the performers, is meant to arouse the audience's senses making it abstractly interactive."

Begins Sept. 4th at Philly PACK (729 S. 4th St). For more information, visit here.

Pretty Girl Tips

One of Philly's most unique and strange drag queens is bringing something digital to this year's Fringe Festival. "The website is going to be like if Pretty Girl owned a Xanga or Live Journal in the early 2000s, when the Internet was just a little bit younger, in the age of AOL chat rooms, " Daniel Hart, the mastermind behind Pretty Girl told me over Facebook. "It's going to reflect personal problems I have had, and dealt with but through the personality of a preteen Pretty Girl. Kinda like a prequel to what Pretty Girl is today."

Goes live Sept. 6th. Visit here.

Zanna, Don't!

Zanna, Don't! is a musical fairytale set in a world where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is taboo. Originally produced off-Broadway, the cult musical theater fave is being brought to the Fringe Festival by local theater company eXPosed.

Brian Peeke, co-founder and co-artistic director of eXposed, told me, "Zanna, Don't! is the bedtime story your parents forgot to tell you. For me, it is a gentle way to explore what actually makes us see someone else as "different" from the way we perceive ourselves. When you take our society's rules and turn them on their ear, we get to see just how similar we really are."

Opens Sept. 10th at The Swing at MacGuffin at the Adrienne (2030 Sansom St.). For more information, visit here.

Spank Rock

Baltimore-born and Philadelphia-based rapper Spank Rock is playing the Festival Late Night at FringeArts. 'Committed to creating music that is experimental, soulful, and wild,' Spank Rock released a new EP last year and has been touring all over the world since. Eighties hardcore band MCRAD opens.

9 p.m. on Sept. 12th at the FringeArts (140 N. Columbus Blvd). For tickets.

Purgatory

Gunnar Montana returns to the Fringe Festival with another wickedly beautiful production after last year's "Resurrection Room". This year's work is "Purgatory," and is being billed as "Montana's most mature and thought-provoking work yet."

Montana originally drew inspiration from Hozier's music video for "Take Me to Church," featuring two gay men and the violently homophobic backlash that ensues when the community learns of their relationship. "I got to thinking, how do I feel about church? How do I relate to religion? And what is my outtake on religion and Catholicism," he told me between rehearsals at The Latvian Society. "I thought what a fun challenge. So I started to go to church because I thought it would be an inspiring concept to build a show off of."

Begins Sept. 9th at The Latvian Society (521 N. 7th St.). For more information, visit here.

Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret

The high queen supreme of the theatre drag community is Martha Graham Cracker, who just celebrated her 10th year in lashes and heels. After playing a packed house at Union Transfer last month and a wet field of 4,500 gawkers at Diner En Blanc - Martha is bigger than ever.

She has been picked to close out the Fringe, surely to delight audiences with her antics, improv, vocals, and wit.

9 p.m. on Sept. 19th at the FringeArts (140 N. Columbus Blvd). For tickets, visit here.