LGBTQ history in Los Angeles comes to life at Circa: Queer Histories

This Saturday in Los Angeles, a particularly ardent queer history buff will be able to join a downtown LGBTQ heritage walking tour, listen to a conversation with Radical Faeries co-founder Don Kilhefner, watch a preview of a documentary about feminist trailblazers, attend a lecture on the LGBTQ past in Long Beach and end the day at the never-dull Tom of Finland House with readings on the cultural significance of kink and voguing.

It’s all part of the Circa: Queer Histories festival, which returns for the second edition of LGBTQ History Month – also known as October – with events exploring and celebrating Los Angeles’ untold queer heritage.

“Los Angeles is not just a big city, it’s kind of like a small country,” said Tony Valenzuela, executive director of One Institute, the organizer of Circa. “There is so much diversity here, people from all over the world, and it has a really vibrant community – not just the queer and trans community, but queer and trans history. This story has long been overshadowed by New York and San Francisco, but I think that’s really changing.

At the forefront of this change is Circa itself, which debuted last October with an ambitious monthly schedule of more than 70 events to celebrate the 70th anniversary of One Institute.

“We wanted to have a different time of year where we could, as a community, focus on our culture – taking into account all of the history, of course, but also to be able to have sober conversations and provide space for any issues that may come up that may not seem like issues related to with Pride Month,” Valenzuela said. “We didn’t know if it would work, and we discovered that it actually did.”

One of the lessons Valenzuela and his developers learned from the first Circa was that when it comes to meaning, size isn’t everything.

“These don’t have to be events that fill an auditorium with 300 people,” he explained. “There are a lot of really solid, smaller events going on where people have rich conversations, or there are other presentations that attract 40 or 50 people, and that’s still important. There’s nothing we do in the LGBT community that didn’t start with a small group of people talking about something in someone’s living room or in some social space.”

Valenzuela said it’s hugely important to the festival’s success that many of Circa’s programs are created by the vanguard of the local LGBTQ community.

“As a result, people are talking about issues that may be on the fringes right now, but we know that over time they will move to the center,” he said. “There’s a lot of that at Circa and we’re really proud of it.”

This year’s Circa’s diverse program of nearly 70 events includes a panel on the oral histories of Los Angeles’ Black LGBTQ community and a screening of the documentary “UNIDAD,” about the founding in Los Angeles of gay and lesbian Latinos Unidos, the region’s first queer Latino organization, and workshops on HIV and Palestine, making zines at Risograph, and “whacking,” an underrated disco-era dance that originated in gay clubs in Los Angeles.

One of the events Valenzuela himself is most excited about is the Oct. 10 performance of Laser Webber’s one-man musical comedy about the history of transgender men, “A Shark Ate My Penis: A History of Boys Like Me.”

“It’s a very timely issue of trans people in transition and what that means in this personal, humorous way,” Valenzuela said. “I’m really looking forward to this show because I feel like it’s really touching on issues that are very important in the queer and trans communities today, and ones that have history but also break new ground. People like Laser are paving the way for the way we think about these topics.”

Webber’s performance is one of several in Circa’s enhanced stage and screen calendar this year, thanks to closer collaboration with the Los Angeles LGBT Center and its Renberg and Davidson/Valentini theaters. High profile opening and closing plenary sessions will also book the entire festival for the first time this year.

Circa’s inaugural October 4 plenary session, titled “Our Most Queerest Century: A Conversation with the Los Angeles Times,” will focus on the newspaper’s June 2024 project to explore 100 years of queer politics, life and culture.

The closing plenary session on October 27, titled “The Future of Queer History: LGBTQ+ Writers on the Election,” will feature authors Roxane Gay, Tre’vell Anderson, and George M. Johnson in a discussion on the upcoming presidential election, moderated by a queer historian and community representatives media personality Eric Cervini.

The upcoming elections also fit in with this year’s Circa theme, “Love and (R)evolution,” Valenzuela said.

“We all felt there was urgency in November, and our relationships with all the developers really showed that we all understood what was at stake,” he said. “It seemed like these two ideas really kind of defined the history of queer activism: love because it’s about our love and relationships and pleasure; and revolution because we have always had a revolutionary tendency within us to change culture and be famous rabble rousers and just open envelopes and redefine love and relationships.

Circa changed its ticketing model from essentially free last year to a ticketed system this year, but Valenzuela said the festival couldn’t happen without the support of One Institute partners, which include the offices of Los Angeles County Supervisors Lindsey P. Horvath, Holly J. Mitchell and Kathryn Barger, as well as the city of West Hollywood.

“This year, the city and county are showing more commitment to kind of elevate what we’re doing and give it a name,” he explained. “They see this as a civic event because of One’s historical significance and are eager to partner with an organization like ours to provide programming to their constituents.”

Valenzuela said it’s also important to developers that Circa events take place throughout the famously sprawling Los Angeles area.

“It really is in every corner of the county,” he said. “What’s important is that we want residents of neighborhoods in every corner of the region to have access to programs devoted to LGBT history. The LGBT community is not just about West Hollywood and Hollywood, it is about all of us.”

Such saturation is one reason why the festival will focus solely on Los Angeles for the foreseeable future, although Valenzuela said he understands the potential for Circa to eventually expand into the national market.

“I feel like we need to find the right formula in Los Angeles first — what our communities really want and need, how to apply it where it’s useful to our artists and activists, and really do it here before we’re ‘I’ll think about national,’” he said .

Valenzuela added that queer and trans people have always had to fight erasure and misinformation about who they are, their role in American life, and their contributions to social and political progress in America and around the world.

“We often say at One Institute, ‘People without a history are people without a future,’” he said. “So our role is to constantly remind, uplift and highlight the rich history that we have in so many different communities that is not taught in schools – or barely taught, even in places like Los Angeles.”