Arts & Entertainment
Young, out and proud
Team D.C. scholarship recipients share experiences
From left, Luis Vasquez, Ilana Kapit and Colin Ward. (Photo by Kevin Majoros)
Team D.C., Washington’s gay sports connection, recently announced six scholarship awards to local openly gay student athletes ranging from $500-$2,000. The Blade caught up with three of the recipients to pose a few questions: Luis Vasquez is attending Montgomery College, Ilana Kapit is attending Barnard College and Colin Ward is attending the University of North Carolina.
Washington Blade: What kind of sports did you play growing up?
Vasquez: I have been in the United States for three years and played varsity soccer at Bowie High School. In my senior year, we won the Maryland state championships. I was also on the modeling team of my school since I love fashion and participated in some dance recitals.
Kapit: I’ve played soccer since I was very young. My parents wanted me to have an athletic outlet and I picked that one. I played on several different classic and rec teams throughout school, as well as on my JV team for two years of high school, one of which I was the captain. It’s an incredible sport and has definitely had a huge positive impact on my life.
Ward: I did not play for any team at my high school. Growing up I played basketball, baseball and tennis. However, I didn’t continue these at the high school level. At college I row for the UNC Men’s Crew team.
Blade: Any positive or negative stories to tell about your teammates finding out that you were gay?
Vasquez: Most of my teammates here in the United States never paid attention to my preferences and they were always super cool to me. When I was living in El Salvador, my teammates made fun of me and I was bullied for being gay. At one point, I stopped playing soccer, which was very frustrating.
Kapit: I was on a rec team with people I had known since kindergarten and on my classic team since it started, so with both teams I had a family and no one really seemed to care when I came out. Most of them had already guessed. With my school soccer team, unfortunately, it was a little bit different. My teammates didn’t have much of a negative reaction, but my coach really didn’t appreciate the way that I dressed or wore my hair. He was only openly rude about it a few times and those times hurt. Once he wouldn’t put me in the goal simply because I had my hair gelled into a Mohawk for a school spirit day. That sucked.
Ward: I originally was anxious about how my teammates would perceive me, but these guys surprised me I think as much as I surprised them. I didn’t fit into preconceived notions of what it means to be gay. By doing workouts with the team, as we push each other to be faster and stronger, the idea of me as a “gay athlete” falls away and I become just another teammate. When I started with crew, I wouldn’t have thought my future teammates would also become my closest friends.
Blade: In what way did playing sports contribute to the person you are today?
Vasquez: Sports helped me to be free to be who I am. I am not afraid of anyone. I know what I want in life and I am motivated to continue playing soccer and pursue a career in fashion. I am currently recovering from a soccer injury, but sometimes I play with the Federal Triangles Soccer Club to keep myself in the sport.
Kapit: Playing soccer definitely shaped my ability to work with other people. Soccer isn’t one of those sports in which a team can be successful while relying on one person; it really does take everyone’s contributions. I learned to really work with my friends in a much different way than I was used to from school. I learned when I needed to step up and take action, and when I needed to step back and let someone else take the ball up the field. The concepts I learned in soccer are way more applicable to real life than I realized when I started playing back when I was four.
Ward: Because of crew, I’m healthier, happier and am able to push myself farther in all aspects of my life.
More information on the Team D.C. Scholarship program is at teamdc.org.
The 13th annual Hagerstown Pride Festival was held at Doubs Woods Park in Hagerstown, Md. on Saturday, June 21.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
‘Hunter S. Thompson’ an unlikely but rewarding choice for musical theater
‘Speaks volumes about how sad things land on our country’
‘The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical’
Through July 13
Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington, Va.
$47 to $98
Sigtheatre.org
The raucous world of the counterculture journalist may not seem the obvious choice for musical theater, but the positive buzz surrounding Signature Theatre’s production of Joe Iconis’s “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical” suggests otherwise.
As the titular, drug addled and gun-toting writer, Eric William Morris memorably moves toward his character’s suicide in 2005 at 67. He’s accompanied by an ensemble cast playing multiple roles including out actor George Salazar as Thompson’s sidekick Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, a bigger than life Mexican American attorney, author, and activist in the Chicano Movement who follows closely behind.
Salazar performs a show-stopping number — “The Song of the Brown Buffalo,” a rowdy and unforgettable musical dive into a man’s psyche.
“Playing the part of Oscar, I’m living my Dom daddy activist dreams. For years, I was cast as the best friend with a heart of gold. Quite differently, here, I’m tasked with embodying all the toxic masculinity of the late ‘60s, and a rampant homophobia, almost folded into the culture.”
He continues, “My sexuality aside, I like to think that Oscar would be thrilled by my interpretation of him in that song.
“Our upbringings are similar. I’m mixed race – Filipino and Ecuadorian and we grew up similarly,” says Salazar, 39. “He didn’t fit in as white or Mexican American, and fell somewhere in the middle. Playing Oscar [who also at 39 in 1974 forever disappeared in Mexico], I pulled out a lot of experience about having to code switch before finally finding myself and being confident just doing my own thing.
“As we meet Oscar in the show we find exactly where’s he’s at. Take me or leave me, I couldn’t care less.”
In 2011, just three years after earning his BFA in musical theater from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Salazar fortuitously met Iconis at a bar in New York. The pair became fast friends and collaborators: “This is our third production,” says George. “So, when Joe comes to me with an idea, there hasn’t been a moment that I don’t trust him.”
In “Be More Chill,” one of Iconis’s earlier works, Salazar originated the role of Michael Mell, a part that he counts as one of the greatest joys of artistic life.
With the character, a loyal and caring friend who isn’t explicitly queer but appeals to queer audiences, Salazar developed a fervent following. And for an actor who didn’t come out to his father until he was 30, being in a place to support the community, especially younger queer people, has proved incredibly special.
“When you hear Hunter and Oscar, you might think ‘dude musical,’ but I encourage all people to come see it.” Salazar continues, “Queer audiences should give the show a shot. As a musical, it’s entertaining, funny, serious, affecting, and beautiful. As a gay man stepping into this show, it’s so hetero and I wasn’t sure what to do. So, I took it upon myself that any of the multiple characters I play outside of Oscar, were going to be queer.
Queer friends have seen it and love it, says Salazar. His friend, Tony Award-winning director Sam Pinkleton (“Oh, Mary!”) saw Hunter S. Thompson at the La Jolla Playhouse during its run in California, and said it was the best musical he’d seen in a very long time.
“Since the work’s inception almost 10 years ago, I was the first Oscar to read the script. In the interim, the characters’ relationships have grown but otherwise there have been no major changes. Still, it feels more impactful in different ways: It’s exciting to come here to do the show especially since Hunter S. Thompson was very political.”
Salazar, who lives in Los Angeles with his partner, a criminal justice reporter for The Guardian, is enjoying his time here in D.C. “In a time when there are so many bans – books, drag queens, and travel — all I see is division. This is an escape from that.”
He describes the Hunter Thompson musical as Iconis’s masterpiece, adding that it’s the performance that he’s most proud of to date and that feels there a lot of maturity in the work.
“In the play, Thompson talks to Nixon about being a crook and a liar,” says Salazar. “The work speaks volumes about how sad things land on our country: We seem to take them one step forward and two steps back; the performance is almost art as protest.”
Photos
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