By Erik Borg
Posted Sep. 3, 2014 @ 7:00 am
In Provincetown, the summer afterglow of early September is very real. The crowds and chaos have vanished, but the warm days and deep blue waters hang on.
On Commercial Street, a nightly frenzy gives way to calm, crisp evenings so suddenly that it’s almost spooky.
This is the special time in Provincetown when the Afterglow Festival comes to town.
Now in its fourth year, the aptly named festival returns next week, Sept. 8-14, with a new series of edgy and avant garde performances for those who are smart enough to stick around for them.
Like it has nearly every year, the festival has grown. In one week, 18 performers take the stage at The Crown & Anchor in what amounts to a reclamation of Provincetown’s birthright as a haven for the fringes of stage performance. (For a full line-up of performances and ticket information, go to onlyatthecrown.com or afterglowfestival.org.)
“Just as Provincetown is synonymous with fine art, it needs to be synonymous with progressive performance art. It’s a huge part of the history of this town,” says Quinn Cox, who co-founded the festival with John Cameron Mitchell, star and creator of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”
In its short history, the festival has introduced Provincetown to an impressive list of underground acts that have big names in places like Greenwich Village and off-Broadway, but were otherwise unheralded here. Name likes Justin Vivian Bond, Bridget Everett, Lady Rizo, Penny Arcade, Jay Brannan and others.
“That’s one of the reasons why we did this. People barely came out for John Cameron Mitchell when he played at the Grotta Bar [five years ago],” says Cox, who also performs in the festival and is one half (along with wife Stella Starsky) of the astrological stage duo Starsky & Cox.
This year, Cox has grown and shuffled the roster with performers hailing from far beyond the underground scene of Greenwich Village, many of them fresh faces to Provincetown and the Afterglow Festival.
One of the new acts is Bitch, known for her “unique brand of electric violin performance art meets bass, ukulele and keytar rock,” says Cox.
Other main draws include playwright-guitarist J. Stephen Brantley, the female drag interpreter Fauxnique, comic memoirist Frank Decaro, and writer-performer Drew Droege.
Cox explains that some of the Afterglow performers may be unknowns in Provincetown but are titans of a certain underground scene, playing to packed crowds at Joe’s Pub in New York City and selling out at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.
While it’s hard to pin down exactly what makes an Afterglow performer, audiences are starting to get it, Cox says.
“It’s been fun because people are starting to trust us. They may not know what something’s about but they like what we’re putting on stage,” he says.
The nonprofit festival donates a portion of its ticket sales to various local charities, including the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod and Helping Our Women. In turn, the festival relies on local support from individual donors and businesses such as The Crown & Anchor and partnerships with institutions such as Joe’s Pub, the American Repertory Theatre’s Oberon space in Cambridge, and the J.K. Rowling Fund.
With their support, Cox and his cohorts are taking the Afterglow message global.
“We’re getting on stages all around the world and constantly saying ‘Provincetown,’” he says. “We’re going out there and bringing people back to P’town to come to see art. We’re selling a Provincetown of theatrical destination.”
