Creating queer theater in Trump territory

The charming Shepherdstown, located on the banks of the Potomac River, is famous among Civil War history buffs. Located close by are the solemn fields of Antietam, site of one of the conflict’s bloodiest early battles. With its Shepherd University, its bookstore featuring a section of banned titles, its refined restaurants and its bars decorated with rainbow flags, this island of 1,500 inhabitants in the middle of West Virginia, true Trump territory, is, according to Peggy McKowen “everything you wouldn’t expect” from the Republican state.

McKowen is the Artistic Director of the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF), another reason why Shepherdstown is an exception in the vast Appalachian region that, along with its mountain range that spans a large part of the eastern United States, is known, at least in this part, for being proudly conservative. Thanks to a dogged dedication to new theater, the festival is one of the last of its kind in a country where support for the stage arts is in decline and the network of regional venues is shrinking.

CATF takes place every July, and attracts a thriving community of theater lovers who also, says McKowen, enjoy “risk-taking” because “they never know what awaits them when they sit in those chairs.”

They come from across West Virginia and the country, but above all, nearby big cities: Baltimore and Washington DC, urban nuclei that stand an hour and a half away by car and supply the small town with its weekend visitors. CATF just ended its 35th edition with a formula that has evolved over the years into its current form: five new plays spread across the Shepherd University’s three theaters and performed over four weeks.

“Fearless stories” was the event’s 2025 motto, one that organizers say defined the works included in this year’s program, a sampling from the “between 100 and 150 texts” that are sent in with hopes of being “developed and produced.” This year’s crop included a critique of the health care system and pharmaceutical corporations (Side Effects May Include…), a loopy gay romantic comedy set in the hypermasculine world of 1980s Hollywood stunt doubles (Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular) and Unraveled, in which Kevin Kling, a disabled “storyteller,” recounts his life story with the help of live music.

In their own way, each of the three plays represent the United States that Trump seeks to erase. At 70% of voters, West Virginia was the second most Republican-leaning state in last year’s presidential election, falling only behind Wyoming. In Jefferson County, where Shepherdstown is located, 57% of the electorate voted for Trump, so a production like Happy Fall, with its homoerotic scenes, may present certain challenges to the values of the majority of local residents. Though the festival is associated with the university, says McKowen, it is “an independent nonprofit.” “And that saves them of some problems,” she adds, smiling.

A battle against the drug industry

Side Effects, by reputed playwright Lisa Loomer, is the most well-rounded of the bunch, comprised of an update to the Mary Magdalene myth and a reflection on what it means to grow up as an Asian American in a 92.8% white state. Loomer’s play is based on her own experience as mother to a son who develops akathisia, a neurological disorder characterized by the feeling of extreme restlessness and an inability to sit still. It is commonly triggered with antipsychotic drugs that are readily prescribed by doctors.

Loomer, whose recent Broadway debut of her play Real Women Have Curves was met with critical success, explained in a phone interview that she felt compelled to tell the story in Side Effects, making her first-hand experience with its subject matter clear. “If that hadn’t been the case, no one would have believe what the protagonist has to go through,” she says. The mother character, played by Lisa Fernandez — who leads a stupendous cast of four who represent various roles from doctors to friends and family without ever leaving the simply designed set — turns from one treatment to another, each more expensive than the next, to no avail.

“CATF is a sought-after space by writers in the United States. A place where they know they can test out plays on an audience, and continue perfecting their scripts. There is a lot of respect. Everyone is concentrated on one thing: that the work turns out in the best way possible,” explains Loomer.

One of the actresses in Side Effects, Susan Lynskey, explained at the end of the play’s run that the festival provides the actors with eight weeks’ of housing: “Four for rehearsals, in our case, with Loomer, and the four that the play runs.” “That setup allows you to work deeply on the characters, in a place like this, where there are no possible distractions,” said Lynskey, who lives between Washington and New York and calls herself an actress who goes “beyond the repertory of Shakespeare”, whose career is geared towards “new theater.” “An incubator for new productions like this is a rarity in this country,” she said. In an empty room on the university campus, McKowen explains after a showing of Happy Fall that CATF’s model was more common in the past. One of its brilliant peers was the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, which ran from 1976 to 2021, the year it was finally ended by the pandemic.

CATF was born in 1991 inspired by the still-active festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts that is celebrating its 71st edition this year, whose centerpiece has been a production of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real with Pamela Anderson. “Our founder Ed Herendeen was asked to put together a classic festival,” recalls McKowen, who has been living in Shepherdstown “for around 20 years”. But Herendeen, she adds, was no “Shakespeare guy’, he was more like a ’new theater guy.”

That continues to be the event’s focus. The festival does not just finance its plays’ staging — it also gets involved in refining its selected scripts when needed. A third of its funding, according to Interim Managing Director Amy Wratchford, comes from ticket sales. “The rest is individual and institutional donations,” she says. “Before, there was also federal money, but like for other cultural projects, that has disappeared with the return of Trump to the White House.”

The plays born in this corner of the Appalachians will sometimes go on to hit the regional theater circuit, a category that in the United States is used to define stages in mid-sized cities from Washington to Columbus, Ohio. They represent an alternative to Broadway, an artistic and physical space in which the most successful works at Shepherdstown will sometimes turn up. Some go even further: McKowen cites two that have been adapted into films: Farragut North, on which George Clooney’s 2011 political thriller The Ides of March was based, and the 2004 feature film Stage Beauty, starring Claire Danes and Billy Crudup.

“Theater in the United States has a problem with a lack of renewal in its audience, which is very old and essentially white. If we don’t do something, it will die,” says Loomer, whose Real Women Have Curves captivated Latino audiences this season, as well as “people who had never been to Broadway before.” The playwright says that high ticket prices don’t help. “People really have to think about whether they want to spend $150 or $200, and to justify those prices, the productions have to be hits. It’s a vicious circle.” Tickets in Shepherdstown cost this year an average of $53.

When the festival comes to a close, all the money generated by subsequent productions of its plays go to their creators. Except, jokes McKowen, if they land a big Hollywood contract. “In that case, we may ask to get a share of the rights,” she says. Otherwise, the festival is content to be able to continue creating this oasis for contemporary theater every summer in the middle of Trump territory.

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