Covington’s Carnegie Theater Director offers passion and community through queer performances

In case you didn’t know, Covington is bursting with queerness. From their downtown rainbow crosswalks, ever-growing queer-owned businesses sprinkled on Main Street, and flamboyant theater productions, the Northern Kentucky city is an underrated queer-friendly mecca. No one knows this better than Carnegie Theater Director and queer culture leader, Tyler Gabbard.

“People are friendly here,” the Alexandria native explained. “There’s always going to be a handful of uptight people wherever you are, but Northern Kentucky — especially Covington — is a welcoming place where we look out for our neighbors.”

In November 2022, Carnegie hired Gabbard to lead its theater program and he and his team weave inclusivity into the heart of their work creating an affirming and safe space for queer theater buffs and creatives across the board.

“The concept of queerness is easy to put on stage,” says Gabbard. “You’re creating the world you dream of. I’m sure that’s why so many queer people are artists and creatives.”

But before Gabbard started bringing shows like Kinky Boots and The Rocky Horror Show to the Carnegie, he was doing what any young gay theater kid does — idolizing Judy Garland and The Wizard of Oz.

“As a kid, the show that got me hooked on theatre was a high school production of The Wizard of Oz which is, of course, bursting with queerness, aesthetically, thematically, and culturally,” Gabbard explains. “I was fully obsessed as a kid. I was so into Judythat at 10-years-old I recorded the limited series “Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows” and had it practically memorized.” 

His young budding passion for theater grew larger into adulthood leading him to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where he focused in Theatre Management and Scenic Design.

“When I got to New York, it was the first time I was fully immersed in a queer culture with other theater [students] and it was the first time I truly started to feel community,” reflects Gabbard. 

For him, theater has always been what gave him a sense of community and is the core of his entire being.

“Art is kind of all I think about and talk about!” he laughed. “It’s my life, It’s like air or water in a way. My husband is a visual artist and an art teacher. Our house is full of art. We talk about art and consume art nearly constantly.” 

Although the Carnegie’s productions are not exclusively for queer people or focused on queer stories, Gabbard definitely makes a point to bring memorable queer themed performances to the over a century-old theater. Shows like last season’s Kinky Boots and this season’s The Rocky Horror Show demonstrate a commitment to queer inclusivity one might think doesn’t exist in a small Kentucky town.

“Kinky Boots and The Rocky Horror Show show that queerness is about seeing the world not as it is but as it could be,” Gabbard says. “Queerness is inherently about creation. It’s what queer people have to leave behind as a legacy.”

And as for Covington’s legacy? He believes that Covington will always “have our backs.”