Arts & Entertainment
Gay themes at Fringe
Edgy D.C. festival features several LGBT stories, players
Laura Zam in ‘An Hour with Ken Johnson.’ (Photo courtesy of Fringe)
For this year’s Capital Fringe Festival, Laura Zam is stuffing a sock in her underpants.
Recently she explained: Along with a short wig and the suit and tie that she’ll wear to play the title motivational speaker in her one-woman show “An Hour with Ken Johnson” (at the Goethe Institut), she’s decided to complete the costume by adding a bulge down below.
“It’s fantastic to dress as a man,” says the seasoned performer. “I’ve played men in the past, but Ken is my most sustained male role. As a writer and an actor it’s allowed me to enter an entirely new world. The sock should only make it better.”
“What I’m doing combines comedy, theater and motivational talk,” continues Zam, a Brooklyn transplant who lives with her husband in D.C. “And Ken is part evangelical preacher and a little bit Anthony Robbins. He’s also a recovering Internet porn addict, and though he’s kind of weird and a bit of clown, he delivers a message of optimism and comments on human resilience. Hopefully audiences will have a laugh but also get something out of what he has to say.”
An annual performing arts event, the Capital Fringe Festival features more than 140 performances including theater, dance and music in various venues around town. It draws both accomplished and less experienced artists performing both well known and original, untested works. The results are uneven but rarely dull. Tickets are affordable.
Local African-American historian Anthony Cohen has twice retraced arduous Underground Railroad routes. After completing his second trek, walking from Alabama to Canada, Cohen uncovered an account describing how his runaway slave African-Jewish-Irish-Cherokee ancestor Patrick Sneed had traveled the identical path to freedom in 1849.
Blown away by his discovery, Cohen who is gay, began speaking about his connection to Sneed’s experience. For this year’s Fringe he’s adapted his lecture expressly for theater with a one-man show titled “Patrick & Me” (at Goethe Institut), supplementing the material with visuals and musical montages. “I went searching for the Underground Railroad,” says Cohen, “but the Underground Railroad was searching for me.”
At the Apothecary, Mixrun Productions presents Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Only this time the tragic tale of betrayal and insanity is played out by present day bikers locked in a violent turf war. And while the company’s take on the classic is heavily abridged, says cast member Katie Wanschura who is gay, the text is otherwise mostly faithful. Because almost one third of the parts have been re-imagined as gay or bisexual, some pronouns have been changed.
A web designer by day, Wanschura is thrilled to be cast wily and wicked Edmund restyled as a flirtatious lesbian bartender at the aptly named Gloucester. “From behind the bar, I get to watch the story unfold,” she says. “Also I hit on the female patrons and interact with the audience. It’s great.”
For several years, Patrick Doneghy has toyed with the idea of doing a revue featuring men singing Broadway songs typically performed by women. With Dominion Stage’s “That’s What She Sang” at Studio’s Mead Theatre, he’s realized and expanded on the idea by writing, staging and acting in a juke box musical with a connected story.
Comprised of a seven man, mostly gay cast (Doneghy is gay), the show focuses on a queer men’s support group and the problems its members encounter. Songs include women’s tunes like “Gimme Gimme” from “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and “Maybe This Time” from “Cabaret.”
“We’re exploring romantic mishaps here, not big social issues,” says Doneghy. “It’s a chance to hear music we all know in a new way and to hear some LGBT stories that don’t always get told.”
In “Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Capital Balloon Ride,” Philadelphia improv partners Kelly Jennings and Karen Gertz play a pair of time-traveling Victorian cultural anthropologists. Wherever they land — in this case Mountain at Mount Vernon Church– these curious, slightly loopy ladies take stock of their surroundings and set to work getting to know the locals.
“It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” says Jennings, who is gay. “While our characters kick off the conversation, the audience actually guides the show exploring subjects that are important to them. Participation isn’t mandatory, but once warmed up, almost everyone is willing talk; and people leave feeling they’ve connected with their community in a way that doesn’t happen in any other theater experience.”
For performance schedules and venue locations, go to capfringe.org.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
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Pride flag removed from Stonewall Monument as Trump targets LGBTQ landmarks
Capital Pride wins anti-stalking order against local activist
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D.C. bar Rush facing eviction on charge of failing to pay rent
Blade, Pride House LA announce 2028 Olympics partnership
D.C. non-profits find creative ways to aid the unhoused amid funding cuts
Calendar: February 6-12
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