Arts & Entertainment
Howard Theatre to host first queer party in 60 years
Pride event recalls ‘Moms’ Mabley’s decadent 1940s celebration
After her after-party was raided by police, Jackie ‘Moms’ Mabley reportedly kept her ‘hen party’ going at the Howard Theatre. (Blade file photo)
Back in the 1940s, when an after party for a “Moms” Mabley show was raided by police at a nightclub owned by D.C.’s “female Al Capone,” Odessa Madre, the attendees weren’t ready to go home, so they kept their decadent queer party going at the Howard Theatre.
At least that’s what Marc Powers, director of marketing for the Howard Theatre, has gathered from accounts from those who knew Jackie “Moms” Mabley, and those who were part of the Howard Theatre community in its heyday.
“Moms Mabley played the Howard Theater,” Powers said. “When that got shut down they were like ‘damn, where are we going to go? Might as well just go back to the Howard!’”
More than 60 years later, the theater will host its first official LGBT event when Brightest Young Things and Capital Pride present WildLife, featuring a queer lineup, including recording artist and New York City personality Amanda Lepore, JD Samson of Le Tigre and MEN, Natty Boom and more. The party is set for Friday, 9 p.m.-3:30 a.m. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Visit dcpride2012.eventbrite.com for more information.
“Now it’s not happening under the cloak of the night,” Powers says about the difference between Mabley’s impromptu “girls party” and Friday’s Pride party. “It’s being advertised in the Blade and City Paper and the Washington Post.”
“This is very much our history as well, here at the Howard,” said John Marble of Brightest Young Things about the lesser-known gay stories that dot the 101-year history of the theater.
The Howard Theatre’s director of marketing is interested in unearthing more of the gay history of the recently restored landmark.
The story of the Howard Theatre’s long lost gay party is almost too fantastic. Because the party was unofficial, there was no written record. Powers said it’s an important part of the recently restored theater’s distinguished history. D.C.’s most notorious madam treating her good friend — a top comic who confirmed suspicions she was a lesbian before she died — to a smorgasbord of her favorite things.
It was fitting that the first artist to play the Howard Theatre for its third grand re-opening on April 13 was black lesbian comic Wanda Sykes, echoing Mabley’s last live performance on April 17, 1975 at the second grand re-opening of the theater weeks before her death.
Though Mabley was not closeted, she wasn’t known as a lesbian to most of her fans, as her onstage persona was quite the opposite. But off-stage, Mabley was known as a pioneer, dressing androgynously and appearing in drag in movies like “The Emperor Jones.”
The assumed original location of the party, Madre’s flagship “Jill Joint” — a nickname for an establishment that trafficked in illegal gambling, drugs, liquor and prostitution — the “Club Madre” was located at 2204 14th St., N.W., the site of the new Mova lounge.
“The club offered liquor by the shot, numbers by the book and girls by the hour,” The Washington Post published in a 1980 piece on Madre. “The late comedienne Jackie ‘Moms’ Mabley performed there free, spending her days in Washington as Odessa’s guest. The two became like sisters.”
“We’re talking about a three-decade relationship, here,” Powers said of the companionship that Madre and Mabley shared from the 1940s through the 1970s.
Though unrecorded until now, Powers said that it’s important to recover and preserve the gay history of the historic Howard Theatre as well, and the connection with Mabley/Madre as well as Duke Ellington’s writing partner Billy Strayhorn, another notable gay character in Howard’s history.
“We don’t know if Madre was at ‘the Madre’ at the time,” Powers said of the after-party, which Powers described as a “hen party.” “She had rooms, clubs, and restaurants all over the city. …She had moving, rotating circles. But Odessa was the host of the party.”
After the club was shut down, Mabley was not interested in going to bed.
“She always keeps the party going,” Powers said. “She’s notorious for that.”
Powers said, according to accounts, it was Mabley herself who was able to secure the key in the middle of the night.
“She gets the key somehow — maybe from a night manager — and has the party upstairs in the Howard Theatre’s balcony,” Powers said.
The 2024 Winchester Pride festival was held on the grounds of the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Va. on Saturday, Oct. 5. Performers included LaLa Ri of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Star of “Pose” Dominique Jackson was the special guest at the vogue party “Kunty” on Saturday, Oct. 5 at Bunker. DJ Mascari provided the music.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
‘Acting their asses off’ in ‘Exception to the Rule’
Studio production takes place during after-school detention
‘Exception to the Rule’
Through Sunday, October 27
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
$40-$95
Studiotheatre.org
After-school detention is a bore, but it’s especially tiresome on the last day of classes before a holiday.
In Dave Harris’s provocative new play “Exception to the Rule” (now at Studio Theatre) that’s just the case.
It’s Friday, and the usual suspects are reporting to room 111 for detention before enjoying the long MLK weekend. First on the scene are blaring “bad girl” Mikayla (Khalia Muhammad) and nerdy stoner Tommy (Stephen Taylor Jr.), followed by mercurial player Dayrin (Jacques Jean-Mary), kind Dasani (Shana Lee Hill), and unreadable Abdul (Khouri St.Surin).
The familiar is jaw-droppingly altered by the entrance of “College Bound Erika” (Sabrina Lynne Sawyer), a detention first timer whose bookworm presence elicits jokes from the others: What happened? You fail a test?
Dasani (who’s teased for being named for designer water) dubs Erika “Sweet Pea” and welcomes her to the rule-breaking fold. Together the regulars explain how detention works: The moderator, Mr. Bernie, shows up, signs their slips, and then they go. But today the teacher is tardy.
As they wait, the kids pass the time laughing, trash talking, flirting, and yelling. When not bouncing around the classroom, Dayrin is grooming his hair, while Dasani endlessly reapplies blush and lip gloss. At one point two boys almost come to blows, nearly repeating the cafeteria brawl that landed them in detention in the first place.
It’s loud. It’s confrontational. And it’s funny.
Erika is naively perplexed: “I thought detention was quiet. A place where everyone remembers the mistakes that got them here and then learns how to not make the same mistakes again.”
For room 111, the only connection to the outside world is an increasingly glitchy and creepy intercom system. Announcements (bus passes, the school’s dismal ranking, the impending weekend lockdown, etc.) are spoken by the unseen but unmistakably stentorian-voiced Craig Wallace.
Dave Harris first conceived “Exception to the Rule” in 2014 during his junior year at Yale University. In the program notes, the Black playwright describes “Exception to the Rule” as “a single set / six actors on a stage, just acting their asses off.” It’s true, and they do it well.
Miranda Haymon is reprising their role as director (they finely helmed the play’s 2022 off-Broadway debut at Roundabout Theatre Company in New York). Haymon orchestrates a natural feel to movement in the classroom, and without entirely stilling the action on stage (makeup applying, scribbling, etc.), the out director gives each member of the terrific cast their revelatory moment. In a busy room, we learn that Tommy’s goofiness belies trauma, that Mikayla is admirably resourceful, and most startling, why Erika, the school’s top student, is in detention.
Mr. Bernie is clearly a no-show. And despite his absence, the regulars are bizarrely loath to leave the confines of 111 for fear of catching yet another detention. Of course, it’s emblematic of something bigger. Still, things happen within the room.
While initially treated as a sort of mascot, awkwardly quiet Erika becomes rather direct in her questions and observations. Suddenly, she’s rather stiffly doling out unsolicited advice.
It’s as if an entirely new person has been thrown into the mix.
Not all of her guidance goes unheeded. Take fighting for instance. At Erika’s suggestion, St.Surin’s Abdul refrains from kicking Dayrin’s ass. (Just feet from the audience gathered for a recent matinee in Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Abdul’s frustration resulting from anger while yearning for a world of principled order is palpable as evidenced when a single tear rolled down the actor’s right cheek)
Set designer Tony Cisek renders a no-frills classroom with cinder block walls, a high and horizontal row of frosted fixed windows that become eerily prison like when overhead fluorescent lighting is threateningly dimmed.
Still, no matter how dark, beyond the classroom door, a light remains aglow, encouraging the kids to ponder an exit plan.
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