(This post was originally published at GLAAD Blog)

On Dec. 1, the annual OUTmusic Awards will celebrate 20 years of music history in the heart of Times Square.

This year’s nominees reflect a diversity of rising and established artists all working together to promote equality through music.

Tragedy and love, attempted murder and madcap comedy converge in Shakespeare’s peculiar “The Winter’s Tale,” but you’ll have to hurry to see this smashing production by USD’s graduate theater students: it plays only through Sunday at the Old Globe’s White Theatre.

Ray Chambers (who trained with the Globe in the ’80s) directs on a minimalist but effective bare stage: a tiled floor with a long crack through it, symbolic of the rifts to come.

It’s 1917 in the middle of Mardi Gras. Just two blocks from the French Quarter is Storyville, the red light district of New Orleans with its saloons, gambling joints and brothels. Louis Armstrong, Ma Rainey and Jelly Roll Morton are creating the unique sound of American jazz and this is the place to hear it.

Set in the bawdy “Mulligan’s Saloon and Cabaret Club,” this musical will ignite the stage with music duels between two kings of the jazz trumpet and sizzling dance numbers.

Screenwriter Austin (Josh Adams), house-sitting his mom’s place east of Los Angeles, is surprised when his brother Lee (Stephen Rowe) shows up.

Familiarity has always bred contempt for these two. The Ivy League-educated Austin has wife and family and a job he likes; Lee survives by burglary and is often on the move. They’ve been estranged for the past five years.

Beer-guzzling Lee is in search of new targets, thinks his mom’s neighborhood looks promising, and wants to borrow Austin’s car for a heist.