I’ve gushed many times over our bloggers. They’re smart, sexy and down right talented. We also have quite a few performers in our midst and I’m going to repeat myself a bit, but hell, good news bears repeating.

Zina Camblin’s play And Her Hair Went With Her closes this Sunday at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood. The L.A. Times wrote "If you want to catch two wicked talents get into trouble, head for the Fountain Theatre, where Tony winner Tonya Pinkins and Cold Case actress Tracie Thoms are tearing it up in And Her Hair Went With Her." So all you Los Angelenos don’t miss Zina’s final shows.

Lenelle Moïse's two-person play EXPATRIATE runs July 7 - August 3 at Culture Project, 55 Mercer Street (@Broome) in New York, NY. I had a chance to see her preview several weeks back. It was the first time the show played to an audience and I have to say, to at least my untrained eyes, it was flawless. Without giving the whole story away, the play is about the lifelong friendship of two women through loves, heartbreaks, addiction and self-discovery told in dialogue and song. I had no idea Moïse can sing, like for real, dag. I saw Moïse again last night at the Pink and Bent performance and, I have to tell you, if you think her writing is phenomenal, her delievery is utterly captivating. She oozes charisma and magnetism. Did I mention she gives me blogger crush?

Because I so want you guys to check out this play, Commander Bang actually arranged for a ticket giveaway to Lenelle’s show. Please click into our contest page for EXPATRIATE, and you and a friend may win a chance to see the play.

I’ve written a lot about our lesbian/queer visual culture and when I see performace like Lenelle’s I remember we all use our various talents to articulate our inner vision.

Do you remember Steven Spielberg's movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind? There was this random group of people who were suddenly compelled to create an image of this odd mountain. All of these people became obsessed with an inner vision and they began painting, drawing and sculpting what they saw. This obsession eventually lead all of these artists to discover that their vision was indeed real, that there was an actual mountain which had been appearing to them. The mountain turned out to be the place where the aliens were communicating with the earthlings. Okay, forget the aliens for a second — the metaphor to me is really about what compels us as a community to express who we are. That expression is found so amply in our arts and all of the many ways we create and explore it.

Angela Jimenez shared with me last night that she met Judy Chicago in New Mexico while she was attending a conference for book publishers and photographers. Her meeting with Chicago brought up many interesting issues that women artists face today or, more accurately, don’t face today due to the pioneering efforts of second-wave feminists. So I asked Ange if she could share her encounter with Judy here, which I hope we can post next week. And I really appricate the way Diana digs out the political embedded in art and asks us to explore the levels at which the personal is political. I remember Eve Ensler saying something about her own art needing to be political in this day and age because she would find it totally self-indulgent.