Arts & Entertainment
Best of Gay D.C. 2016: MEDIA
Blade readers voted for their media favorites
Best Local Blog
Brightest Young Things
Runner-up: DCist
Best Local Podcast
JellyVision
Runner-up: C.L.I.T. by Lezlink
“The JellyVision Show” combines humor with creative entrepreneurship co-hosted by standup comedian Tim Trueheart and Jennifer Crawford, also known as Jelly.
Crawford says she came up for the idea of the podcast in 2010 while running her own creative co-working space. Visual artists, performing artists and writers were coming to work on projects and Crawford was amazed by the level of creativity.
“If you weren’t in the building, you weren’t in the building,” Crawford says. “So I thought if we had a podcast we could expose people who weren’t coming into our building to these people that we were meeting every day. We could interview them and if just a few people tuned in it was a few people who didn’t know these creative entrepreneurs beforehand. It was really just an experiment.”
The experiment turned into a real project once Crawford’s business closed. Saddened, she and Trueheart, with whom she had improvised in a theater troupe for years, decided to keep the podcast going.
Now the podcast is recorded from Crawford’s dining room every Monday with episodes released on most podcast platforms, including iTunes and Google Play, weekly. The podcast now rakes in 5,000-7,000 downloads per month.
Crawford notes the podcast isn’t about how to become a millionaire, but how to live a lifestyle that incorporates doing what you love.
“But we wanted to bring an entertainment value to the table,” Crawford says, “so we throw in some fart jokes along the way.” (Mariah Cooper)
Best Local Twitter Feed
@DCHOMOS
“News, noise, food, sports, art, charity, fashion, TV, film, happy thoughts, all things LGBT+DC.”
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: @alexmorash
Best Local TV Personality
Chuck Bell, NBC 4
(2015 runner-up; 2014 winner in this category)
Runner-up: Kidd O’Shea, ABC 7
Best Radio Station
Hot 99.5
“D.C.’s No. 1 hit music station and home of ‘The Kane Show.’”
(Second consecutive win in this category)
Runner-up: WAMU 88.5
To see winners in other categories in the Washington Blade’s Best of Gay D.C. 2016 Awards, click here.
Team DC, the umbrella organization for LGBTQ-friendly sports teams and leagues in the D.C. area, held its annual Night of Champions Awards Gala on Saturday, April 20 at the Hilton National Mall. The organization gave out scholarships to area LGBTQ student athletes as well as awards to the Different Drummers, Kelly Laczko of Duplex Diner, Stacy Smith of the Edmund Burke School, Bryan Frank of Triout, JC Adams of DCG Basketball and the DC Gay Flag Football League.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The 2024 National Cannabis Festival was held at the Fields at RFK Stadium on April 19-20.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Covering the @NatlCannaFest at RFK Stadium for @WashBlade . Stop by the LGBTQ+ booth and pick up a paper if you are here. pic.twitter.com/is7hnsaPns
— Michael Patrick Key (@MichaelKeyWB) April 20, 2024
Theater
‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith
A ‘fully autobiographical’ work from out artist Adil Mansoor
‘Amm(i)gone’
Thorough May 12
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St., N.W.
$60-$70
Woollymammoth.net
“Fully and utterly autobiographical.” That’s how Adil Mansoor describes “Amm(i)gone,” his one-man work currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
Both created and performed by out artist Mansoor, it’s his story about inviting his Pakistani mother to translate Sophocles’s Greek tragedy “Antigone” into Urdu. Throughout the journey, there’s an exploration of family, queerness, and faith,as well as references to teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations with his Muslim mother.
Mansoor, 38, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and is now based in Pittsburgh where he’s a busy theater maker. He’s also the founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former artistic director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQ youth arts organization.
WASHINGTON BLADE: What spurred you to create “Amm(i)gone”?
ADIL MANSOOR: I was reading a translation of “Antigone” a few years back and found myself emotionally overwhelmed. A Theban princess buries her brother knowing it will cost her, her own life. It’s about a person for whom all aspirations are in the afterlife. And what does that do to the living when all of your hopes and dreams have to be reserved for the afterlife?
I found grant funding to pay my mom to do the translation. I wanted to engage in learning. I wanted to share theater but especially this ancient tragedy. My mother appreciated the characters were struggling between loving one another and their beliefs.
BLADE: Are you more director than actor?
MANSOOR: I’m primarily a director with an MFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon. I wrote, directed, and performed in this show, and had been working on it for four years. I’ve done different versions including Zoom. Woolly’s is a new production with the same team who’ve been involved since the beginning.
I love solo performance. I’ve produced and now teach solo performance and believe in its power. And I definitely lean toward “performance” and I haven’t “acted” since I was in college. I feel good on stage. I was a tour guide and do a lot of public speaking. I enjoy the attention.
BLADE: Describe your mom.
MANSOOR: My mom is a wonderfully devout Muslim, single mother, social worker who discovered my queerness on Google. And she prays for me.
She and I are similar, the way we look at things, the way we laugh. But different too. And those are among the questions I ask in this show. Our relationship is both beautiful and complicated.
BLADE: So, you weren’t exactly hiding your sexuality?
MANSOOR: In my mid-20s, I took time to talk with friends about our being queer with relation to our careers. My sexuality is essential to the work. As the artistic director at Dreams of Hope, part of the work was to model what it means to be public. If I’m in a room with queer and trans teenagers, part of what I’m doing is modeling queer adulthood. The way they see me in the world is part of what I’m putting out there. And I want that to be expansive and full.
So much of my work involves fundraising and being a face in schools. Being out is about making safe space for queer young folks.
BLADE: Have you encountered much Islamophobia?
MANSOOR: When 9/11 happened, I was a sophomore in high school, so yes. I faced a lot then and now. I’ve been egged on the street in the last four months. I see it in the classroom. It shows up in all sorts of ways.
BLADE: What prompted you to lead your creative life in Pittsburgh?
MANSOOR: I’ve been here for 14 years. I breathe with ease in Pittsburgh. The hills and the valleys and the rust of the city do something to me. It’s beautiful, it’ affordable, and there is support for local artists. There’s a lot of opportunity.
Still, the plan was to move to New York in September of 2020 but that was cancelled. Then the pandemic showed me that I could live in Pittsburgh and still have a nationally viable career.
BLADE: What are you trying to achieve with “Amm(i)gone”?
MANSOOR: What I’m sharing in the show is so very specific but I hear people from other backgrounds say I totally see my mom in that. My partner is Catholic and we share so much in relation to this.
I hope the work is embracing the fullness of queerness and how means so many things. And I hope the show makes audiences want to call their parents or squeeze their partners.
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‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith