Arts & Entertainment
Out & About: D.C. and Baltimore
‘Normal Heart’ production opens, ‘Pariah’ screening planned and more


Arena Stage presents ‘The Normal Heart’ running from June 8-July 29. Photo by Carol Rosegg; courtesy Arena)
Kramer classic ‘Normal Heart’ opens D.C. run
Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater’s production of the 2011 Tony-awaring winning production of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart,” directed by George C. Wolfe, opens today.
The cast includes original cast members Patrick Breen and Luke MacFarlane, returning in new roles, and original production understudy Jon Levenson, as well as Patricia Wettig from ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” and “thirtysomething,” Broadway stars Tom Berklund, Michael Berresse, Christopher J. Hanke, Nick Mennell, Chris Dinolgo and John Procaccino.
“The Normal Heart” tells the story of a group of friends struggling with the mysterious disease ravaging New York’s gay community, looking at sexual politics during the AIDS crisis.
This production is an Affiliated Independent Event of AIDS 2012, the biennial International Conference, to be held in D.C. from July 22-27. To spread awareness of the ongoing fight against AIDS, Arena will be holding related events and partnering with organizations throughout the production’s run.
Sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display in the Mead Center along with images from the HIV/AIDS relation collections of the Archives Center at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Local clinics and HIV testing providers will have HIV testing vans parked outside the Mead Center on select weekends and panel discussions with guest speakers will follow select matinees.
Arena Stage and the Washington AIDS Partnership will host a benefit performance on July 23. The evening will include a pre-performance VIP cocktail hour, intermission champagne toast and a dance party following the performance.
Tickets range from $40-$94. Tickets for the benefit performance events start at $75.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit arenastage.org.
Wolf Trap features bounty of summer shows
Wolf Trap’s summer season is heating up with a week full of concerts.
World-renowned contemporary instrumentalist Yanni begins the week tonight at 8 p.m. The concert will include music from his previous shows as well as songs from his newest album, “Truth of Touch.” Tickets range from $30-$55.
Gavin DeGraw and Colbie Caillat come together on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The duo has performed several duets during previous joint tours. Tickets range from $25-$40.
Wolf Trap has its 23rd annual Louisiana Swamp Romp on Sunday at 2 p.m. The concert will feature Allen Toussaint Band, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Big Sam’s Funky Nation. Southern dishes will also be available on the plaza. Tickets are $25.
Country superstar Martina McBride comes to Wolf Trap on Wednesday with Grammy-nominated David Nail. McBride is a four-time Country Music Awards Female Vocalist of the Year and dedicated her single, “I’m Gonna Love You Through It” to cancer survivors, performing on a pink-li Empire State Building to raise breast cancer awareness. Tickets range from $35 to $48.
Bonnie Raitt plays Thursday with special guest Mavis Staples. Tickets range from $30-$48.
For more information on the concerts and to purchase tickets, visit wolftrap.org.
‘Drag Race’ alums at Town this weekend
Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) is kicking off Pride weekend with performances from the stars of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Sharon Needles, Phi Phi O’Hara and Dida Ritz will all be performing during the club’s drag show starting at 10:30 p.m. They will also be sticking around to sign autographs and take pictures after the show.
The club is continuing its Pride celebration with a dance party on Saturday featuring DJ Manny Lehman, the Ladies of Town and Tha Dance Camp.
The Town drag show is hosted by Lena Lett and stars Tatiana, Shi-Queeta–Lee, Epiphany B Lee, Ba’Naka and special guests.
Doors open at 9 p.m. and admission is $20. Friday night attendees must be 18 or older and Saturday night attendees must be 21 or older.
For more information and future events, visit towndc.com.
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‘Pariah’ screenings at Busboys & Poets
Busboys & Poets is offering a free screening of the film, “Pariah” at each of its four locations throughout the month continuing Sunday at its 14th and V streets location (2021 14th St., N.W.) at 8 p.m.
Written and directed by Dee Rees, the film follows Alike, a 17-year-old African American woman who lives with her parents and younger sister in Brooklyn, as she embraces her identity as a lesbian and wonders how much she can confide in her family.
The film stars Adepero Oduye as Alike, Kim Wayans as her mother Audry, Charles Parnell as her father Arthur, Sahra Mellesse as her sister Sharonda, Pernell Walker as her friend Laura and Aasha Davis as Bina, a potential love interest.
The other screenings will be June 17 at the Shirlington location at 7 p.m. and June 24 at the 5th and K streets location at 8 p.m.
— JULIETTE EBNER
Bock’s minimalist play is journey of self-discovery
Iron Crow Theatre Company’s “The Typographer’s Dream,” a play by Adam Bock, runs through June 16 at the Johns Hopkins University’s Swirnow Theatre (33rd St. and Charles St., Baltimore).
The play centers on a three characters: a stenographer, geographer and typographer. As the play progresses, the characters reveals how they’re defined by their jobs and the meaning and notions of their lives are called into question.
Bock is gay and has been nominated for two Outer Critics Circle Awards.
The play runs every night at 8 p.m. Regular tickets are $17 while students and seniors are $12. For more information, go to ironcrowtheatre.com
Mount Vernon club starts Baltimore Pride celebrations
S.H.E. Productions is kicking off Baltimore Pride at Grand Central (1001 North Charles St., Baltimore) with a party event on Thursday at 9 p.m.
S.H.E. Productions is an event production company in the Baltimore area that specializes in LGBT events of various types. Its staff often performs at clubs but they also host high energy boot camps for fitness and outings/excursions.
Grand Central is surrounded by several eateries and is within walking distance of the Inner Harbor and the Walters Art Museum.
Cover is $5 at the door. For details, visit centralstationpub.com or visit sheproductionsevents.com.
Baltimore Hons commemorates ‘60s culture
HonFest, an annual festival that celebrates the historic working women of Baltimore, is this weekend on 36th Street in the Hampden neighborhood.
Started in 1994, HonFest has grown into a nationally recognized festival. Women can participate to become Baltimore’s Best Hon by sporting beehive hairdos, bright-blue eye shadow and spandex pants. Exhibitions include local musicians and artists.
The event is free but it will be $5 to park. For more information, visit honfest.net.
Twilight on the Terrace starts Pride weekend
Twilight on the Terrace benefit cocktail party will be held at Gertrude’s Restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Drive) on June 15 from 7-11 p.m.
The evening will include a silent auction including artwork, gift certificates to restaurants and shops, themed gift baskets, a Myrtle Beach vacation, an autographed photo of Doris Day and dates with local celebrities. Guests will also be able to meet Baltimore actor Vincent de Paul.
There will be hors d’oeuvres, a four-hour open bar and dancing to DJ Alex Funk.
Tickets are $100. For details, visit baltimorepride.org.
— ERIN DURKIN

The Washington Blade’s second day of Pride on the Pier at The Wharf DC ended with a fireworks show on Saturday, June 7. The fireworks show was presented by the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ Foundation.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

















The new documentary “Lou’s Legacy: A Reporter’s Life at the ‘Washington Blade’” will make its broadcast TV premiere next week.
WETA will broadcast Lou’s Legacy on Saturday, June 21 at 8 p.m. and Monday, June 23 at 9:30 p.m. Maryland Public Television will feature it on June 28 at 10 p.m. People anywhere in the U.S. can livestream the film at WETA.org, PBS.org, the PBS App, and on YouTube TV, Hulu + Live, and Amazon Prime. After the June 21 broadcast, viewers can stream the documentary on-demand on the PBS App, PBS.org, or WETA.org.
The documentary from Emmy-nominated D.C. filmmaker Patrick Sammon tells the story of the legendary Blade news reporter, Lou Chibbaro Jr., as he works on an article about the return of drag icon Donnell Robinson – also known as Ella Fitzgerald — to the Capital Pride stage. Donnell and Chibbaro reflect on their careers and discuss the ongoing backlash against the LGBTQ community, including laws targeting drag performers.
Movies
20 years later, we still can’t quit ‘Brokeback Mountain’
Iconic love story returns to theaters and it’s better than you remember

When “Brokeback Mountain” was released in 2005, the world was a very different place.
Now, as it returns to the big screen (beginning June 20) in celebration of its 20th anniversary, it’s impossible not to look at it with a different pair of eyes. Since its release, marriage equality has become the law of the land; queer visibility has gained enough ground in our popular culture to allow for diverse queer stories to be told; openly queer actors are cast in blockbuster movies and ‘must-see’ TV, sometimes even playing queer characters. Yet, at the same time, the world in which the movie’s two “star-crossed” lovers live – a rural, unflinchingly conservative America that has neither place nor tolerance for any kind of love outside the conventional norm – once felt like a place that most of us wanted to believe was long gone; now, in a cultural atmosphere of resurgent, Trump-amplified stigma around all things diverse, it feels uncomfortably like a vision of things to come.
For those who have not yet seen it (and yes, there are many, but we’re not judging), it’s the epic-but-intimate tale of two down-on-their-luck cowboys – Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) – who, in 1963 Wyoming, take a job herding sheep on the titular mountain. There’s an unmistakable spark between them, and during their months-long shared isolation in the beautiful-but-harsh wilderness, they become lovers. They part ways when the job ends and go on about their lives; Ennis resolutely settles into a hardscrabble life with a wife (Michelle Williams) and kids, while Jack struggles to make ends meet as a rodeo rider until eventually marrying the daughter (Anne Hathaway) of a wealthy Texas businessman. Yet even as they struggle to maintain their separate lives, they reconnect, escaping together for “fishing trips” to continue their forbidden affair across two decades, even as the inevitable pressures and consequences of living a double life begin to take their toll.
Adapted from a novella by Annie Proulx, (in an Oscar-winning screenplay by co-producer Diana Ossana and acclaimed novelist Larry McMurtry), and helmed by gifted Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee (also an Oscar winner), the acclaim it earned two decades ago seems as well-deserved as ever, if not more so. With Lee bringing an “outsider’s eye” to both its neo-western setting and its distinctly American story of stolen romance and cultural repression, “Brokeback” maintains an observational distance, uninfluenced by cultural assumptions, political narratives, or traditional biases. We experience Ennis and Jack’s relationship on their terms, with the purely visceral urgency of instinct; there are no labels, neither of them identifies as “queer” – in fact, they both deny it, though we know it’s likely a feint – nor do they ever mention words like “acceptance, “equality,” or “pride.” Indeed, they have no real vocabulary to describe what they are to each other, only a feeling they dare not name but cannot deny.
In the sweeping, pastoral, elegiac lens of Lee’s perceptive vision, that feeling becomes palpable. It informs everything that happens between them, and extends beyond them to impact the lives they are forced to maintain apart from each other. It’s a feeling that’s frequently tormented, sometimes violent, and always passionate; and while they never speak the word to each other, the movie’s famous advertising tagline defines it well enough: “Love is a force of nature.”
Yet to call “Brokeback” a love story is to ignore its shadow side, which is essential to its lasting power. Just as we see love flowing through the events and relationships we observe, we also witness the resistant force that opposes it, working in the shadows to twisting love against itself, compelling these men to hide themselves in fear and shame behind the safety of heterosexual marriage, wreaking emotional devastation on their wives, and eventually driving a wedge between them that will bring their story to a (spoiler alert, if one is required for a 20-year-old film) heartbreaking conclusion. That force, of course, is homophobia, and it’s the hidden – though far from invisible – villain of the story. Just as with Romeo and Juliet, it’s not love that creates the problem; it’s hate.
As for that ending, it’s undeniably a downer, and there are many gay men who have resisted watching the movie precisely because they fear its famously tragic outcome will hit a little too close to home. We can’t say we blame them.
For those who can take it, however, it’s a film of incandescent beauty, rendered not just through the breathtaking visual splendor of Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography, but through the synthesis of all its elements – especially the deceptively terse screenplay, which reveals vast chasms of feeling in the gaps between its homespun words, and the effectiveness of its cast in delivering it to performance. Doubtless the closeness between most of its principal players was a factor in their chemistry – Ledger and Gyllenhall were already friends, and Ledger and Williams began a romantic relationship during filming which would lead to the birth of their daughter. Both Williams and Hathaway bring out the truth of their characters, each of them earning our empathy and driving home the point that they are victims of homophobia, too.
As for the two stars, their chemistry is deservedly legendary. Ledger’s tightly strung, near-inarticulate Ennis is a masterclass in method acting on the screen, with Gyllenhall’s brighter, more open-hearted Jack serving in perfectly balanced contrast. They are yin and yang to each other, and when they finally consummate their desires in that infamous and visceral tent scene, what we remember is the intensity of their passion, not the prurient details of their coupling – which are, in truth, more suggested than shown. Later, when growing comfort allows them to be tender with each other, it feels just as authentic. Though neither Ledger nor Gyllenhall identified as gay or bisexual, their comfort and openness to the emotional truth of the love story they were cast to play is evident in every moment they spend on the screen, and it’s impossible to think of the movie being more perfect with anyone else but them.
What made “Brokeback” a milestone, apart from the integrity and commitment of its artistry, was that it emerged as a challenge to accepted Hollywood norms, simply by telling a sympathetic story about same-sex love without judgment, stereotype, identity politics, or any agenda beyond simple humanistic compassion. It was the most critically acclaimed film of the year, and one of the most financially successful; though it lost the Oscar for Best Picture (to “Crash,” widely regarded as one of the Academy’s most egregious errors), it hardly mattered. The precedent had been set, and the gates had been opened, and the history of queer cinema in mainstream Hollywood was forevermore divided into two eras – before and after “Brokeback Mountain.”
Still, its “importance” is not really the reason to revisit it all these years later. The reason is that, two decades later, it’s still a beautiful, deeply felt and emotionally authentic piece of cinema, and no matter how good you thought it was the first time, it’s even better than you remember it.
It’s just that kind of movie.
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