Arts & Entertainment
Block party fun
Businesses, residents gearing up for 2nd annual 17th Street Festival
A scene from last year’s 17th Street Festival. This year’s event is slated for 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday. (Blade file photo)
Several blocks of 17th Street N.W., roughly from P to R streets, will be closed Saturday for the second annual 17th Street Festival slated for 2 to 6 p.m., though streets will be closed from noon to 8.
Organizers say it has the flavor of “an old-fashioned block party.”
“It’s a chance to come out, meet our neighbors and just enjoy the street without having to worry about cars or any major disruptions,” says Jack Jacobson, the ANC commissioner for that area who co-conceived the idea last year with Stephen Rutgers and Lee Grenados, president of community group Urban Neighborhood Alliance and a life-long 17th Street resident.
Jacobson says the idea was born out of the street’s extensive year-long “streetscape” renovation that was completed last August and saw all the curbs, gutters and sidewalks there refurbished.
“I saw throughout all that how the residents and businesses worked very closely to make it a success, so I thought a festival inviting neighbors and showcasing businesses would be a great continuation,” Jacobson says.
Rutgers’ boyfriend, Cobalt manager Mark Rutstein, says he was inspired by a recent trip to Chicago where he saw how successful a Market Days event was.
“It was huge and really energetic,” he says. “We kept thinking, ‘This would be really cool if we could do this on 17th Street.’”
A main stage will be constructed in front of Safeway. Acts slated throughout the day include the Deb Felz Band, Sherry Vine, Eric Scott and Company Dance Crew, the Silver Liners (a popular D.C. band), the cast of “Drag City: DC,” DJs Shea Van Horn and Bil Todd who spin at local gay parties, and headliner Inaya Day, who’s slated to go on at 5 p.m.
It’s free and open to everyone but organizers conceive of it as an event mostly for the 17th Street area and its neighbors within walking distance — Logan, Dupont and U Street areas.
“We’re hoping for a nice big turnout but we’re not thinking of it like Adams Morgan where the whole city comes,” Jacobson says with a chuckle.
He guesses about 25 to 35 percent of residents there are gay but says “about 98 percent” are gay friendly.
The blocks there are home to Cobalt and JR.’s, two of D.C.’s most popular gay bars. Rutstein says the two businesses are happy to be involved.
“It’s kind of like it is with the Pride parade, which comes right past us,” Rutstein says. “They’re bringing us all this revenue and increased foot traffic, so it’s kind of our duty to get involved and give back a little.”
There will be a kids’ zone and another area for pets. About half the businesses there will be offering specials; the Blade is a sponsor. It will be held rain or shine. Last year, organizers estimate about 5,000 stopped by throughout the day. They’re hoping for substantially more this year.
Go here for more information.
The 2026 Capital Pride Parade was held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 20.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key, Robert Rapanut and Landon Shackelford)
Theater
‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic
Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London
‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org
Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.
Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.
Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.
At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.
Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.
With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.
The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.
Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.
Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)
Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.
Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.
One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.
They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.
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(Washington Blade photos by Linus Berggren)
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