Gemini 30°

Question No. 8: What is the mission of the Afterglow Festival and how does it differ from that of the Glow Festival and even the Glowberon series for that matter.

A very good question. The Afterglow Festival mission is threefold: first and foremost to save and preserve Provincetown’s birthright as the birthplace of the modern American stage, which it is, dating back to Eugene O’Neill (the only playwright ever to receive a Nobel prize) and Susan Glaspell and the Provincetown players.; secondly, provide a home for professional, progressive, non-commercial performing artists creating in myriad forms, honoring Provincetown’s birth right as an incubator for new, emerging and experimenting stage artists, as it has been for a hundred years. And thirdly, to connect Provincetown to other cultural centers where innovative stage artists and performers thrive and to award Provincetown a gold star on the international festival map.

While Provincetown’s Afterglow Festival presents works, post labor day, each September, and has the capacity to help develop artists’s works, off-season, the new Glow Festival for Cambridge will occur in the full glare of summer. It’s mission being: To provide Boston-Cambridge with an exciting, innovative live performance festival that speaks, particularly, to the city’s own Cantabrigian performance, comedy, improv, musical and otherwise thespian, bohemian roots. To make Boston-Cambridge once again synonymous with cutting-edge theater and performance, galvanizing the existing diaspara of the city’s disparate solo performers and companies, while attracing top international names in alternate live performance. And yes, to also provide Cambridge a brightly burning star on the international festival map where, given its theatrical history not to mention its mere size, it might one day rival other famous “fringes” the world over, with its scope and spirit.