Arts & Entertainment
Spotlight on Anacostia
Ward 8 arts initiative could be ‘transformational’ for neighborhood
Andrea Hope and Tommie Adams look over prints he hopes to have exhibited in the Lumen8Anacostia festival in April. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
With the Smithsonian here and a host of other well-established galleries hosting exhibits — sometimes of national renown — it’s easy to get overlooked in the Washington art scene. But there’s a flourishing art community east of the Anacostia River, a handful of galleries and, come April, a bounty of opportunities for everyone to see them both in the established art houses there and in a bevy of abandoned buildings and warehouses.
Anacostia, just one of the Ward 8 D.C. Southeast neighborhoods east of the River, is changing. On April 14, residents there will launch Lumen8Anacostia, a three-month arts initiative that’s using a $250,000 grant the D.C. Office of Planning received from ArtPlace (a collaboration of nine of the country’s top foundations, eight federal agencies and six large banks that supports “creative placemaking” with grants and more) to be administered to four D.C. neighborhoods (the others are Brookland, Deanwood and the central 14th Street area N.W.) to create temporary art and culture spaces in “emerging” neighborhoods where vacant and/or underutilized storefronts and empty lots will be transformed into art knolls. Arch Development Corporation, which has been working since 1991 to revitalize historic Anacostia with several initiatives and economic development plans, is implementing Lumen8.
Though not an LGBT-specific initiative, one of the organizers, Jeffrey Herrell, is gay and his partner, Tommie Adams, is hoping to have his photography exhibited in one of the spaces. They moved to Anacostia in 2005, delighted at the amount of house and yard they could get for a fraction of the price they would have paid in Washington’s glitzier neighborhoods. Herrell says they love the neighborhood and are delighted to see its cultural side being tapped.
Lumen8 organizers from left are Beth Ferraro, Andrea Hope, Jeffrey Herrell, Nikki Peele and Phil Hutinet. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
“I’m a big ambassador for Anacostia,” Herrell says. “I’m always trying to get my friends to move here and I’ve succeeded a few times. I have great neighbors here. Yes, there have been some ups and downs … but I think [the neighborhood] has been stigmatized. … The neighbors are extremely close, really tight in terms of friendships and the neighborhood kind of brings you together. I really like living here.”
Herrell says he knows two artists who live on his street and has another neighbor who’s an actor/performance artist. His next-door neighbor is also gay, there’s a lesbian couple on his block and another he knows of a couple blocks over. He and Adams say gays in Dupont and Logan would be surprised to discover how easygoing most straight Anacostia residents are with their LGBT neighbors.
“People here really don’t care,” Adams says. “Sometimes the kids will say something at first, but people here don’t really care if there are differences. I guess they have worse issues to deal with.”
Anacostia does, of course, have its problems. About 94 percent black (Ward 7 is 96 percent), Ward 8 residents are plagued with the city’s highest unemployment rate — 35 percent according to the latest figures available from NeighborhoodInfo D.C., a partnership between the Urban Institute and the Washington D.C. Local Initiatives Support Corporation — and 20 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2010. Both, sadly, are the highest rates of D.C.’s eight wards (Ward 7’s unemployment rate is 19 percent for those 16 and older; Ward 3 has the lowest with just 3.4 percent of its 16-and-older residents out of work).
But those figures are part of the reason Lumen8 organizers say Anacostia needs some light, quite literally. In addition to the various exhibits planned, organizers plan to illuminate several Anacostia buildings for the festival. A portion of the grant money will go to Intelligent Lighting Company, which will project lights and images on several buildings there.
“We’re lighting it up literally as well as trying to shine an overall spotlight on the neighborhood,” Herrell says.
“So few people really know the location, they think Anacostia is everything east of the river,” says Nikki Peele, an Arch employee who lives in Congress Heights, another Ward 8 neighborhood. “Even lifelong D.C. residents sometimes think that. They’re not sure of the history here, what’s here to do. For too many people, the information they have is that this is a somewhat scary place, so for a project like this, especially on this scale, it has the opportunity to be a transformational moment and not just for the community but for the outside perception of it … it’s very much a family community with an almost village-like feel. … the name was chosen for a reason — to bring both light and understanding.”
Organizers are selecting artists to have their work shown now from a pool of about 20 applicants who heard about the event through neighborhood listserves and word of mouth. After the April 14 kickoff, exhibitors will have to agree to have their gallery spaces open each Saturday and then six hours on another day during the week for the rest of April, May and June. Aside from the neighborhood’s existing three galleries, space such as a former police warehouse and several vacant storefronts on Martin Luther King Avenue and Good Hope Road will be converted into temporary exhibition space. Portions of the funds from the grant will be used to convert the various spaces and to give to the artists to realize their visions for their exhibits.
Herrell says it’s a good opportunity for both D.C. residents in general and also for the Anacostia artists, most amateurs, who’ve never had their work exhibited before.
“They may not be able to afford to open their own store, but this will give them a taste of what it’s like,” he says.
“It’s a very large-scale project,” says Phil Hutinet, Arch’s chief operating officer. “It’s going to be a huge benefit to the artistic community and to the neighborhood.”
Theater
Two queer artists ready to debut new operas at Kennedy Center
Works by JL Marlor, Omar Najmi part of American Opera Initiative
American Opera Initiative
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater
Jan. 18, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
$25.00 – $39.00
Kennedy-center.org
For those who find traditional opera off-putting or mired in the past, there’s the American Opera Initiative (AOI). Now in its 12th season, the Washington National Opera’s well-known program pairs composers and librettists who under mentorship spend months collaborating on new work, culminating with the premiere of three 20-minute operas.
Included in this year’s exciting group are queer artists JL Marlor and Omar Najmi. While these multi-taskers lend their composition talents to AOI, they are also performers and arts administrators. Marlor’s bio includes electric guitarist, and performer (she fronts the celebrated indie rock band Tenderheart Bitches), and Najmi divides most of his time writing music and performing as an operatic tenor.
Marlor and librettist Claire Fuyuko Bierman’s “Cry, Wolf” is a short yet probing opera about three males (a late teen and two college age) who are navigating some dark internet ideologies. The work explores how the red-pilled manosphere pipeline serves as spaces of community for some people.
“To me it’s a very timely piece inspired by an outlook that has consequences in the real world.” She adds, “We’ve heard a lot about how angry incels [involuntary celibates] think about women. I want to hear what incels think about themselves.”
While Marlor tends to gravitate toward more serious opera pieces, Fuyuko Bierman, whose background includes standup, tends toward humor.
“I think this work brought out the best in both of us. The libretto feels like a comedy until suddenly it doesn’t.”
Marlor was introduced to opera through osmosis. At her gay uncles’ house there was always music – usually Maria Callas or Beverly Sills. She appreciated grand opera but not with the same ardor of true buffs. But her relationship with opera changed dramatically while attending Smith College.
“I was lucky enough to have Kate Soper as my first composition teacher and saw her opera ‘Here Be Sirens’ as my first piece of modern opera. I was totally hooked.”
Originally from picturesque Beverly, Mass., Marlor now lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their very senior dog. For Marlor, coming out at 25 in 2017 wasn’t entirely smooth, but finding support among the many queer women in the world of classical music helped. And more recently, AOI has bolstered her confidence in continuing a career in the arts, she says.
Najmi and librettist Christine Evans’ opera is titled “Mud Girl.” Set against a post-apocalyptic, climate-affected world, it’s the story of a mother, daughter, and the daughter’s child Poly, created from toxic detritus, trying to navigate relationships.
“Most people go into opera without having had a ton of exposure. Often through musical theater or choir,” says Najmi, 37. In his case, he was pursuing a BFA in musical theater at Ithaca College. After an unanticipated internal transfer to the School of Music, where he transitioned from baritone to young gifted tenor, his interest veered toward opera.
While enjoying a performance career, he wrote his first opera on a whim. “And now,” he says “composition is my creative passion. Singing is more like a trade or sport. I love the action of doing it and practicing.”
In one of his recent operas, “Jo Dooba So Paar,” Najmi, who is half Pakistani American, draws specifically from personal experience, exploring how queer and Muslim don’t necessarily need to be conflicting identities. And while he grew up in liberal Boston in a secular environment, he still had insights into what it means to exist in two worlds. It’s a story he wanted to tell.
On a broader level, he says coming of age in the 1990s and aughts, on the cusp of homosexuality becoming normalized and accepted, created certain angsts. Today, his artist’s voice is drawn to the sentimentality that comes with unrequited longing.
What’s more, Najmi collaborates with his husband Brendon Shapiro. In 2022, the Boston-based couple co-founded Catalyst New Music, an organization dedicated to fostering, developing, and producing new works.
AOI’s three 20-minute operas will be led by conductor George Manahan and performed by Cafritz Young Artists on Jan. 18, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.
Following their world premiere at the Kennedy Center, the three operas will travel to New York City in a co-presentation with the Kaufman Music Center. The Jan. 23 performance will mark AOI’s first appearance in New York City.
Music & Concerts
Gay Men’s Chorus starting the year with a cabaret
‘Postcards’ to be performed at CAMP Rehoboth
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington will perform “Postcards,” a cabaret, on Saturday, Jan. 18 at 5:00p.m. and 8:00p.m. at CAMP Rehoboth Elkins-Archibald Atrium.
In this performance, the choir will share hilarious and heart-warming stories and songs about the travel adventures they’ve had and hope to have. Songs include “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “Streets of Dublin,” “Magic To Do,” “Home,” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Tickets cost $35 and can be purchased on Camp Rehoboth’s website.
Friday, January 10
“Center Aging Friday Tea Time” will be at 2 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more details, email [email protected].
Women in their Twenties and Thirties will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social discussion group for queer women in the Washington, D.C. area. For more details, join their closed Facebook Group.
Go Gay DC will host “First Friday LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour” at 7 p.m. at Puro Gusto. This event is ideal for making new friends, professional networking, idea-sharing, and community building. This event is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Saturday, January 11
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Ms. Capital Pride will host “MAL Weekend Drag Brunch” at 12 p.m. at Baby Shank. Guests will enjoy a lively gathering full of joy, laughter, and connection. They will also indulge in food and drinks while enjoying dazzling performances and entertainment. Tickets are $27 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.
LGBTQ People of Color Support Group will be at 1 p.m. on Zoom. This peer support group is an outlet for LGBTQ People of Color to come together and talk about anything affecting them in a space that strives to be safe and judgement free. For more information and events for LGBTQ People of Color, visit thedccenter.org/poc or facebook.com/centerpoc.
Sunday, January 12
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Dinner” at 6:30 p.m. at Federico Ristorante Italiano. Guests are encouraged to come enjoy an evening of Italian-style dining and conversation with other LGBTQ folk. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
DC9 Nightclub will host “Dance Club” at 8 p.m. at 1940 9th St., N.W. At this event, Jacq Jill and Flotussin will join Dance Club for the Sunday night closing party of MAL Weekend at DC9. The Baltimore staples will be joined by Dance Club resident DJs Baronhawk Poitier, Joyce Lim & Tommy C, plus Artemis on lights, to close out a jam-packed MAL 2025. Tickets start at $10 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.
Monday, January 13
Center Aging: Monday Coffee & Conversation will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of their choice. For more details, email [email protected].
Genderqueer DC will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a support group for people who identify outside of the gender binary. Whether you’re bigender, agender, genderfluid, or just know that you’re not 100% cis. For more details, visit genderqueerdc.org or Facebook.
Tuesday, January 14
Trans Support Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group is intended to provide emotionally and physically safe space for trans people and those who may be questioning their gender identity/expression to join together in community and learn from one another. For more details, email [email protected].
Coming Out Discussion Group will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a peer-facilitated discussion group and a safe space to share experiences about coming out and discuss topics as it relates to doing so. For more details, visit the group’s Facebook page.
Wednesday, January 15
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
Thursday, January 16
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5:00 pm if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga with Charles M. will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a free weekly class focusing on yoga, breathwork, and meditation. For more details, visit the DC Center for the LGBT Community’s website.
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