This Pride Month, I'm very excited to be featuring Adam Odsess-Rubin & his theatre company National Queer Theater as they get ready to present their annual Criminal Queerness Festival.

When I read about all the good work the National Queer Theater does & the kinds of shows they spotlight in the Criminal Queerness Festival, I knew I had to speak with Adam!

In this interview, Adam answered my call to share:

• The origins of National Queer Theater & how it was founded
• Inspiration behind launching the Criminal Queerness Festival
• What makes the 2026 festival distinct
• How shows are selected for the festival through a global, mission-driven process
• The impact the creators hope audiences feel & how art can resist authoritarianism
• Losing NEA funding & turning that setback into new opportunities
• How supporting marginalized artists through NQT gives Adam a sense of Pride
• Encouragement & practical advice for unseen or censored queer artists 
• So much more

Connect with Adam: Website, Instagram

National Queer Theater’s Obie Award-winning Criminal Queerness Festival (CQF) showcases groundbreaking new works written by artists from countries where queerness is criminalized or censored.

At a time when authoritarianism is on the rise globally, CQF elevates refugee, asylee, and immigrant queer voices and enriches the cultural fabric of New York City by introducing audiences to bold, original works that challenge Western norms and inspire global change.

The 8th Annual Criminal Queerness Festival will take place from June 10-27, 2026 at HERE Arts Center in NYC, showcasing the work of Arab LGBTQ+ playwrights. Click Here for Tickets!

Adam Odsess-Rubin
Photo Credit: Antonio M Rosario BRIC StudioBK

1. The 2026 Criminal Queerness Festival will be taking place from June 10-27 at HERE Arts Center, presented by your theatre company National Queer Theater (NQT). Before we get to the current festival, let's go back to the beginning (a very good place to start). How did you create the National Queer Theater? My background is in theater and community organizing. When I was a grad school student at NYU in the Applied Theater program, my professor Joe Salvatore asked us to write grant proposals for a made-up organization. I wrote a grant proposal for National Queer Theater, and he encouraged me to send it around.

Tom Viola from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS gave me a $5,000 seed grant and with that I was able to hire a logo and website designer. I registered nationalqueertheater.org on godaddy.com for $25, and the rest is… well, you know.

2. How did you come up with the idea for the Criminal Queerness Festival? I had worked with an incredible queer writer, Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko, from Kenya who had to immigrate to America to make queer theater.

I was struck thinking about how many LGBTQ+ stories we lose each year because of censorship and criminalization - all the stories from the 60+ countries that criminalize queer and trans people.

At the same time, I was watching Elliot Page and Ian Daniels’ show Gaycation, where they travelled around the world interviewing LGBTQ+ activists and artists, including countries where being openly queer is incredibly dangerous.

When a call was put out for NYC cultural organizations to create programming for WorldPride in 2019, I started to gather some other artists from around the world, and we staged the first Criminal Queerness Festival at IRT Theater in June 2019 near the Stonewall Inn.

Art Illustration By Raisa Monroe-Yavneh

3. What makes this year's festival unique? This year’s festival features three unique new shows by queer Arab artists showcasing dynamic stories from the SWANA (Southwest Asian North Africa) region.

We’re producing a musical, a play, and a solo clown show, so we’re excited about the variety of genres we’re able to present.

What unites all these artists is the smart way they each use comedy and satire to illustrate their storytelling as an artistic form of resistance.

4. How do you decide on the shows you are going to accept into the Criminal Queerness Festival? Each August, we put out a global call for submissions. Then, we gather a group of previous festival artists and staff from National Queer Theater and HERE Arts Center to read and evaluate scripts.

Each submission gets two readers to help reduce bias, and readers evaluate scripts based on writing quality and connection to the mission of the festival.

We’re really interested in the writers’ biographies and how this festival might support their careers and artistic freedom. We also think about diversity of geography, format, and identity.

We try to work with a mix of emerging and established artists. Through a rigorous evaluation process, we narrow down submissions to 10 finalists and then choose three shows that feel most aligned with the mission of the festival.

5. What do you hope audiences come away with after seeing this year's shows? I want audiences to understand how art can be a weapon in our collective fight against authoritarianism. Music, comedy, and drama are tools we have at our disposal to educate, inspire, and organize.

Think about CBS cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show. Dictators know that art, and satire specifically, have the power to disrupt society in powerful ways.

I hope audiences leave the festival more committed to the global fight for LGBTQ+ rights, and excited to create more of their own art.

6. In 2025, you lost your funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, thanks to our current president, but you found ways to bridge that gap by starting a Go Fund Me Campaign & securing other funding. What was the most difficult part of this loss that ultimately turned into again? Such a great question. We ultimately raised more money than we lost from the NEA, but
it was a bit of a flash in the pan. The GoFundMe was a one-time thing.

Now the question is, how do we sustain the fundraising we need to offset the lost support from the federal government?

Beyond the money, I think the most difficult part of the loss of funds was the collective feeling of hopelessness amongst queer and trans artists, and artists of color.

We’ve been able to cultivate a sense of hope in our community by launching an ACLU-backed lawsuit against Trump’s NEA, and speaking loudly about fighting censorship.

I think about The Washington Post slogan ‘democracy dies in darkness.’ It’s important to be vocal in the face of censorship, and continue to speak truth to power.

7. How did your fundraising efforts from last year help you finance or find backers for this year's festival? The money we raised last year in the wake of our lawsuit helped us raise funds for this year’s festival. We surprisingly went into 2026 with a surplus!

What really helped was the press we got around the lawsuit. We were mentioned in The New York Times, NPR, NBC News, and The Guardian. This press put us on the radar of big foundations and private donors.

Now the real question is, how do we raise money for next year’s festival without the spotlight of the lawsuit?

8. If you were going to perform in the Criminal Queerness Festival, what show would you present? I honestly don’t think I could perform in this festival while also producing. It’s a beast! But if I had to - I was very inspired by this show we produced in 2023 at Lincoln Center called The Division by Andrew Kushnir.

The play is set in Ukraine, where my Jewish family originally comes from. It just had a successful run at Crow’s Theater in Toronto, Canada. I’m very interested in queer Ukrainian narratives during the time my ancestors lived there. If I was going to perform in any show, it would be that one.

9. You do so much for artists who might not otherwise get a chance to showcase their work, whether that be through your theatre company, National Queer Theater (NQT) or your directing work. How does this work fill you with Pride? I’m very privileged as a white cis gay American. Whether working with queer youth, immigrants, or asylum seekers, I’m really grateful to be able to share some of the resources I was given with others.

I love showing artists how their creative work can support LGBTQ+ rights, and showing activists how art and performance can support their advocacy. I want everyone to have that feeling of pride I have in being a queer person.

Society teaches us to be ashamed of who we are from a young age. I see empowering others as my responsibility.

10. What are some words of advice you would give during this Pride Season for artists who don't feel seen or are struggling to get their work staged because of our current leadership? I’d tell them that their work matters. Even if you’re a queer writer in a place where you can’t share your work, write it for yourself. Write it for history. If not now, some day, someone will cherish your story and give it its due.

And if it’s safe, reach out to someone who might be interested in supporting art like yours. Even if they’re online. Or in a different country. There are a lot of people out there interested in your work, even if you don’t know them yet.

11. What is something we didn't get to talk about in this interview that you'd like my audience to know about you? I want people to know that National Queer Theater is still growing. We have so many more queer stories to tell! It’s been 8 years, but I want National Queer Theater to be here for 80 years.

If readers want to support the future of queer theater, they can buy tickets to our Criminal Queerness Festival (June 10-27) or donate at www.nationalqueertheater.org and follow us on social media at @nationalqueertheater.

Adam Odsess-Rubin
Photo Credit: Ben Sweet

More on Adam Odsess-Rubin:

Adam Odsess-Rubin is the Founding Artistic Director of National Queer Theater (NQT) and the acclaimed Criminal Queerness Festival, showcasing censored and criminalized LGBTQ+ artists from around the world. 

Adam has directed community-based theater programs such as Write it Out! for playwrights living with HIV, New Visions Fellowship for Black trans artists, DREAMing Out Loud for LGBTQ undocumented writers, and Youth Write Now for young queer playwrights.

Since 2021, Adam has been a lead Teaching Artist for Rainbow Connection, an intergenerational theater program for queer teens and elders in Fire Island. In 2023, he launched Staging Pride: Queer Youth Theater, a free after school theater program for marginalized LGBTQ+ youth in New York City at The Center.

At NQT, Adam has presented work with Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York Theatre Workshop, NYC Pride, HERE Arts Center, MCC Theater, and PAC NYC.

Through NQT, he has raised over one million dollars for queer and trans artists since 2018, and has received praise for his work in The Advocate, The New York Times, American Theater Magazine, Playbill, and Time Out New York.

Adam is a Teaching Artist and former Education Associate at New York Theatre Workshop, and served as the first Education and Community Programs Fellow at American Conservatory Theatre.

Adam has published work in Howlround, Yale's Theater Magazine and The Teaching Artist Journal, and is a 2020 Mayor's Grant for Cultural Impact awardee and AM NY LGBTQ+ Power Player.

BA: UC Santa Cruz MA: New York University.

About National Queer Theater:

National Queer Theater harnesses the power of live performance to imagine a more just and joyful future. Working alongside social justice movements, we uplift queer community through visionary theater productions and education programs that celebrate free expression in the U.S. and around the world.

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