“Any woman born with a great gift in the 16th century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at….No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational…but were nonetheless inevitable.” —Virginia Woolf, “Shakespeare’s Sister”

WordSpeak Teen Slam event produced by Tigertail Productions.

I’m sure Miami would be fine without Mary Luft, but it would probably be a boring cultural backwater bereft of her wizardry and taste. Under Luft’s directorship over the past 33 years, Tigertail Productions “has commissioned, presented and produced more than 500 artists in the performing and visual arts,” including Marie Chouinard, Wally Cardona, James Cotton, among others.

Another important component of Tigertail’s programming and one of Luft’s greatest gifts to the community is the platform she has given to emerging teen and GLBT voices. Through Tigertail’s WordSpeak and SpeakOut workshop and performance series, Miami has been exposed to writers and slam poets whose work has been elevated to the center of our collective consciousness that would have been otherwise mocked and shunned in another century. From Emanuel Xavier to Lenelle Moïse, Luft and Tigertail embrace traditionally marginalized voices and hold them up at the center of our cultural landscape.

But, like all good things in life, culture comes with a price. No matter how luminous Luft’s curatorial eye is, her vision cannot be realized without the support of the community. Now that our little village has evolved into a major metropolitan center of art and commerce, Mary Luft and Tigertail need the city’s support.

WigOut, Tigertail’s annual fundraiser, celebrates how far Miami has come since the 1950s and how far global culture has come since the 16th century. Women and queer voices are no longer lonely outliers toiling away in the dark, quivering in fear of coming out. Well, this isn’t exactly true everywhere, and that’s why Tigertail is so important. Luft reminds us that Shakespeare’s imaginary sister was real. That no matter how talented women were in the 16th century, “No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish.”

WigOut is just one event, an important event, that keeps our culture creature moving toward the side of enlightenment and full-embrace of difference, rather than exclusion, so that all artists regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity are represented. Support Shakespeare’s sister. Support Mary Luft. Support Tigertail. Support culture.

Join Tigertail on Saturday, October 12, 2013, from 7-11 p.m. at the historic Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s OnStage Black Box Theater, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami, for its annual fundraising party. Tickets are $125; $220 for a pair; $400 for four; $1000 for 10; and are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. (Tigertail Productions is a non-profit organization.) Tickets may be purchased online at www.tigertail.org or by calling 305-324-4337.