Arts & Entertainment
Whitman’s Washington
Local group honors gay poet with lecture/discussion
Walt Whitman, left, with his companion Peter Doyle. (Photo by M.P. Rice public domain)
Overbeck History Lecture Series
Walt Whitman in Washington
Washington Friends of Walt Whitman
Naval Lodge Hall
330 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E.
Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.
RSVP requested to [email protected]
Martin Murray, a local gay Walt Whitman scholar, at the north entrance of the Dupont Circle Metro stop where a Whitman quote is prominently displayed. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Local historian Martin Murray is founder of the Washington Friends of Walt Whitman, a group that conducts tours showing spots in the District that are significant to the late, great poet who was spent a large portion of his adult life here from 1862-1873.
On Tuesday, Murray will lecture at the Naval Lodge Hall in a discussion of the gay poet’s many roles here. Here are a few highlights from a lengthy conversation with Murray this week about why the “Leaves of Grass” author still matters. His comments have been heavily edited for length.
WASHINGTON BLADE: How did you come to be so interested in Whitman?
MURRAY: I was introduced to him in 1976 when I was a student at Rutgers. It was the year of the Bicentennial and there was a series on famous Americans. One was on Walt Whitman in which he was portrayed by Rip Torn. I was in college and coming to terms with my own sexuality. The portrayal was very sensitively drawn, but they made it clear he was gay… which I thought was pretty forward for 1976. I hadn’t studied him much in school, but after that, I was very interested.
BLADE: You’ve done some substantial research on Whitman. What are some of the things you’ve discovered?
MURRAY: I had been interested in his role as a journalist during the war and I found about a dozen additional pieces of Whitman’s journalism that hadn’t been noted before. … Also in some of the things he jotted down during his time visiting wounded soldiers, he would often jot down their names or initials. I thought it would be interesting to find out more about them, so by doing some research at the National Archives where military service records are held and pension records as well, I was able to find a lot. This was about 15 years ago. … I also wrote a biographical essay on (Whitman confidante and probably lover) Peter Doyle that was published in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.
BLADE: Whitman lived here many years. What was his view of his life in Washington?
MURRAY: He was basically here from the last week of December of 1862 until July of 1873. As the war was ending, he got more secure government work. … He had a lot of connections here and worked until he had a stroke in January of 1873 in his office at the Treasury Building where he worked in the Attorney General’s office. He was basically paralyzed I believe on the left side. He tried as best he could to recover but eventually realized he couldn’t stay, so he went to Camden, New Jersey where he lived with his brother. … I think he would have stayed if his health had allowed.
BLADE: Do we know if there were any networks of gay men in Washington at the time or if they had any way of finding each other outside of random encounters?
MURRAY: It’s really hard to say. There probably were networks like that but trying to find firm evidence of it is really difficult. We know Whitman was writing poems about romance among gay soldiers, that there were references in the press suggesting his homosexuality and people he was intimate with in D.C., but it’s hard to say if there was any kind of gay society in that day.
BLADE: What significance does it hold for gays today to have historical figures such as Whitman be recognized as gay forefathers?
MURRAY: Even with the great progress that’s been made, there’s always a struggle, always something to grapple with when we start to realize we’re gay. People need to be able to look back and realize we’re not freaks. People of my kind have always existed and there’s a continuity there that goes all the way back through recorded time.
The Petal Release Party and Drag Show was held at Spark Social on Friday, July 31. Performers included Tiara-Missou, Labianna and Darcy de la Cuadra.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
Celebrity News
Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam
Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon
AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.
The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.
“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.
Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.
Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”
Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.
Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.
Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.
“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”
Theater
Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth
First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’
Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.
A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.
White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”
Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.
“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?
REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.
BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?
WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.
I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.
These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.
Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.
BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?
WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.
I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].
BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?
WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.
BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?
WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.
Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.
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