Penny Arcade

Just as the city gets ready to wave the Stars and Stripes on July 4, Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival of queer performance is hoisting its freak flag high. For its 18th annual hodgepodge of all things gay, the newly renovated downtown institution has engaged the curatorial services of TONY favorite Earl Dax, who has helped assemble a healthy pink lineup.

The centerpiece of the festival is Penny Arcade’s theatrical memoir Old Queen—”I am nothing if not the dutiful daughter of New York’s criminal, psychedelic, intellectual, homosexual avant-garde,” she brags—which will be the iconic performer’s first longish-term theatrical run since 2002. (It plays Thursday through Saturday, July 9–25.) Among the other shows that jump out at us: The Living Theater’s feminist cabaret Salome—A Veiled Threat (July 23–25); Jeffery and Cole Make It Bigger! (Thursdays July 16–30), the latest effort from Jeffery Self and Cole Escola, the stars of Logo’s delightful new comedy series Jeffery and Cole Casserole (set your DVRs!); and a four-day run (July 30–Aug 2) of Uncovered: The Diary Project, by San Francisco’s groundbreaking Sean Dorsey Dance. And then there are one-off performances by the matchlessly inflammatory Justin Bond, the personal storyteller Peter Neofitis, the elfin Australian cabarettist Kim Smith—and even a night devoted to celebrating the legacy of the late gay icon Bea Arthur.

And that’s just a sample of HOT!’s wares; for a full calendar of the festival, which runs through August 9, click here. Summer is ready to bust out all over.