Arts & Entertainment

Jasmine Guy’s world today

Actress in town this weekend with Harlem Renaissance tribute show

Published

12 years ago

February 6, 2014

Actress Jasmine Guy says her passion for black culture in the early 20th century has kept her doing ‘Raisin’ Cane’ for five years. (Photo by Calvin Evans)

‘Raisin’ Cane: A Harlem Renaissance Odyssey’

Starring Jasmine Guy and the Avery Sharpe Trio

Saturday, 8 p.m.

Publick Playhouse

5445 Landover Rd.

Cheverly, MD

$55 VIP (includes pre-show reception)

$40 general

301-277-1710

Actress/singer Jasmine Guy will be in the D.C. area this weekend for a one-night-only performance of “Raisin’ Cane: a Harlem Renaissance Odyssey.”

We caught up with her by phone from her home in Atlanta where she answered questions about the show, gay rights, her work on the hit ’87-‘93 sitcom “A Different World” (she played spoiled Whitley for the show’s entire six-season run) and more. Her comments have been slightly edited for length.

WASHINGTON BLADE: Tell us about “Raisin’ Cane.”

JASMINE GUY: I’ve been doing the show over the past five years in various places all over the country. It grows and changes and morphs every time we do it. I do it with three other musicians — a jazz violinist, a percussionist and our composer, Avery Sharpe and we cover the decade between 1919 and 1929 of the Harlem Renaissance, right after World War I but just before the Great Depression when there was a lot of money flowing into Harlem and a lot of artists were flourishing. Painters, poets, writers, philosophers, so it was a pretty rich time in our American history. A lot of what has come down to us as Americans has come from that period as far as ways of thinking and ways of articulating our needs.

BLADE: Are you playing a specific character?

GUY: I’m like a teacher taking you through this journey. Along the way, whatever lesson needs to be taught, that’s what I do. I either reenact a scene or become another character or I dance or sing or tell a story or recite a poem — there’s a lot of all of that involved in the show.

BLADE: How did you come to the work?

GUY: Avery Sharpe and I have been friends for over 30 years and when he brought the piece to me, it started as a reading and an experimental piece to see where the interest was with people and over the last five years, it’s just continued to grow and grow. I stayed involved because of my passion for that decade and what was happening politically and historically in that time as well as artistically. It was such a fun and exciting time where jazz was birthed and we had poets like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and painters like Aaron Douglas and philosophers like W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey who were claiming freedom in their own way.

BLADE: African-American themes are recurring in your body of work. To what degree have you sought them out versus had them come to you?

GUY: Sometimes they intertwine. There are the roles that we pick and the roles we kind of cross paths with and we don’t really know why. There have been certain projects where I feel like I’m part of telling the truth, whether it’s “A Different World” or “Queen” (“The Story of an American Family”), or “Stompin’ at the Savoy” or “Dead Like Me,” there seems to be a certain truth to the quality of the work we’re doing at the time and I think that truth is what draws me in. I love that we tell stories that haven’t been told yet and that I’m able sometimes to get an audience to think as well as to laugh. I’m not sure which is more important, but I like that I can do both.

BLADE: Some have said gay activists who draw parallels to the Civil Rights movement are overreaching. Is that a valid line of reasoning in your opinion?

GUY: I have had friends over the years who have resented the comparison. … I think what we really all want is to be treated equally and have the right to make our own choices in our lives and in that respect, both gay rights and African-American rights have been stifled in this country and we’ve had to fight for those rights. We are still fighting in certain ways for those rights. … For some … the fight has shifted. I mean, we’re able to vote legally, we’re able to integrate, but there are still very specific things that are disproportionate in this country. There’s a huge class difference and whether you’re black or gay, there are still things we need to speak up for because in principle, it’s all the same principle. We are really all fighting for the same thing.

BLADE: With all your work in the entertainment industry, you must have worked with a lot of gays over the years. True?

GUY: Oh absolutely. I mean, you know, my world is full of gay people. I’ve been so entrenched in the gay community that it has never been a second thought to me. We are all family and because of that, I’m even more sensitive to what my gay friends go through. I’m 51, so I lived through AIDS and although I was very young when AIDS came to be, that’s when I first realized how segregated the gay community was for the rest of the world. Sometimes you forget that the world is not accepting and it takes something bad like the AIDS epidemic for you to realize. That’s when I started to realize my gay friends were heroes in their own right for having the courage to live the lives they know they want and the need and fight for the right to do that. And I don’t use that word fighting lightly, you know. I have friends who have fought all their lives, physically and emotionally. Some who have not had the support of their families. I don’t think people really understood what it means to be gay until very recently, in the last decade or so, whereas for me, it was just always a part of what I knew and understood.

BLADE: You’ve done so much work on stage, film and TV over many years and stage work, of course, by its nature is very ephemeral and fleeting. You can be on a hit show like “A Different World” that was seen by 20 million people each week, yet in some ways, it’s a small part of your overall body of work. Has that ever been a source of frustration for you?

GUY: That was frustrating for me at the beginning. I started as a dancer with the Alvin Ailey Company and yeah, I felt that, you know, my best work is probably the work that most people haven’t seen. I did have to come to terms with that because I mean, just the sheer degree of difficulty of being a dancer and being a gypsy as I was for eight years before I got “A Different World,” compared to the relative ease of being on a hit TV show, I used to think, “OK, I’ve got to make sure everybody knows that these other things are so much more worthy.” I felt it was my personal cause to let people know that, yes, I’ve worked with Judith Jamison and I know Debbie Allen and worked with Courtney Vance in “Six Degrees of Separation” and so and so. … I’ve really been surrounded by greatness and amazing talent and I’ve been in the wings of so many performances where I saw that happen before my eyes and that’s not something we’ve always been so great at being able to recreate on television. … But things are so different now and we have access to everything in a way we did not have before. That was a real turning point for me to realize that. We can say things now we could never say before on a major, major scale and we can create our own audience. It’s always interesting to me when people come up to me, what they come up to me for. I guess I’ve had enough people say, “Oh, I saw you in ‘Chicago,’” or “I remember you years ago on the Academy Awards — I didn’t know you could dance.” They might have seen that thing I thought nobody was watching. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the 20 or 30 million people that watched “A Different World” every week, but I am also proud and happy to have been part of that, too. But these other little sidebars, enough people have commented that I’ve been able to say, “OK, there’s somebody out there who’s seeing the other stuff too.”

BLADE: That said, do you have a favorite episode of “A Different World”?

GUY: My memory of certain episodes is kind of from the inside out. Like I remember doing things more than the effect it may have had on other people. I wrote a couple, so of course I remember those and, hmmm, let me see. Oh my God — we had so many great shows. I tended to like the shows where we had guest stars.

BLADE: Like Gladys Knight — I remember her appearance so vividly.

GUY: Yes, that was huge. I was so excited to get to be a Pip and sing with her and meet her. On the set at one time we had both “Superfly” and “Shaft” because Ron O’Neal played my dad and Richard Roundtree played Charnele’s (Brown, who played Kim) dad. We had Diahann Carroll, Patti LaBelle, Jesse Jackson. We had the cast of “Sarafina!” on when we did a show about apartheid. Those were the most memorable moments for me. These people would come through and we would just sweep ‘em up because by that time we had a rhythm. We just kind of knew we could be funny no matter what we talked about and that was a good place to be for the show.

BLADE: So many iconic sitcom characters don’t work as lead characters. Garry Marshall said they knew better than to try to have Fonzie carry his own show. Other times they tried and it didn’t work — like Flo from “Alice.” I know “A Different World” was still an ensemble cast at heart, yet it seemed like the show really jelled in the second season after Lisa Bonet left and your character Whitley was much more in the lead spot. Why do you think it worked so well when traditionally that type of thing hasn’t worked?

GUY: Well, we certainly weren’t sure it was going to work. That first season, I always felt we weren’t gonna make it. I had never been on a show before but it just seemed kind of dysfunctional and I didn’t feel we were putting out our best product. I was kind of thinking, “OK, that isn’t gonna work, but at least I paid off my American Express.” Then as the show grew and we were picked up year after year and with the legacy of “The Cosby Show” behind us, I started to realize we were part of a wave, a real era of change on American television. I didn’t understand at the time we were at the end of that wave. I didn’t think it would just snap back and never be seen on TV again, you know with the number of female writers and the diversity we had on our show. …. I just thought there would be a whole lot more “Different Worlds” after our show and there really weren’t. … At the time, I think I was able to make that transition because I just did what was given to me to do. I just did what was in front of me. I never thought at the time, “Oh, if Lisa leaves the show, we can still continue if Dwayne and Whitley get together” — there wasn’t any of that. That was all Bill Cosby, Debbie Allen, NBC, the writers — you know this whole team of people that revamped that show and by the second season they had totally revamped it in a way that had more of a realistic HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) feel and they just capitalized on the actors that were already with the show. They brought in Cree Summer and Charnele Brown, but there was an absolute choice made to keep that show going based on what had and hadn’t worked that first season.

BLADE: That opening credit sequence from the second season on was really incredible the way it looks like it was shot in one continuous take with the camera moving from room to room left to right. It couldn’t really have been one take, though, right?

GUY: Oh no, it took like all day long. It was green screened and there were double images — like two of me in the same shot. It was before a lot of computer graphics and things we’re able to do now so yeah. That was the brainchild of Debbie Allen and it was an all-day-long thing — like 12 or 14 hours to do that.

BLADE: Thanks for your time and good luck in the show.

GUY: Thank you.

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Theater

Iconic Eddie Izzard takes on 23 characters in ‘Hamlet’

Energized take on role offers accessible way to enjoy Shakespeare

Published

1 day ago

April 4, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Eddie Izzard in ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet.’ (Photo by Carol Rosegg)

‘The Tragedy of Hamlet’
Through April 11
Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Klein Theatre
450 7th St., N.W.
Tickets start at $90
Shakespearetheatre.org

Eddie Izzard is an icon.

Best known for her innovative standup and film roles, the famed British performer is also a queer activist who over the years has good-naturedly shared details from her decades long trans journey. What’s more, Izzard has remarkably run 43 marathons in 51 days for charity.

And now, Izzard finds a towering new challenge with the worldwide tour of “The Tragedy of Hamlet” (at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Klein Theatre through April 11), in which she plays 23 characters (Hamlet, King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, the ghost, etc.) in a solo performance running just over two hours.

At a recent performance, Izzard, before slipping into character, appeared on the unadorned stage to say that though infused with comedy, “Hamlet” is definitely a tragedy, a story of a family and country both tearing themselves apart. She also warns that there’ll be a lot of breaking the fourth wall. After all, it didn’t exist in 1600 around the time when “Hamlet” was written.

The play unfolds in flurry of movement and scandal as the Danish prince begins to plot revenge after learning that his father, the old king was conspired against and murdered.

While some of Izzard’s character shifts are shown only by a subtle change in stance or modulation of voice, others are more obviously displayed like court sycophant Polonius walking with a stiff leg and mimed cane, or his ill-fated daughter Ophelia trotting girlishly across the upstage platform.

Delivered downstage at the intimate Klein venue, Izzard’s Hamlet soliloquies are performed with striking clarity. The one actor play is adapted and edited by Mark Izzard (the star’s older brother) and directed by Selina Cadell who successfully fosters the visceral connection between the actor and the house. Directly addressing an audience is something Izzard does exceedingly well. You feel as if she’s looking at/speaking to only you.

Cuts and choices are made that might not please traditionalists. The stabbing of eavesdropping Polonius might prove disappointingly underplayed to some. Whereas, the subsequent satisfying dual/death scene is long and precisely choreographed. Fear not, Izzard doesn’t flag a bit, not even when battling a cough (as was the case on the night of No Kings Day).

Not surprisingly, Izzard leans into the comedy. Her deliciously placed pauses, lines read ironically, and double takes, all gifts of comedy sharpened to perfection over a long career that kicked off as a street performer in the early eighties in London’s Covent Garden.

The play within a play scene finds Hamlet slyly rattling the conscience of King Claudius. As played by Izzard, it’s wickedly delightful and especially good. And the back and forth between the grave diggers done as a clever Cockney and his green assistant is a master class in how to play a Shakespearean clown.

Kitted out in a black peplum jacket over leather leggings and boots, Izzard gives gender fluid shades of contemporary diehard scenester and a Renaissance courtier. (Design and styling by Tom Piper and Libby DaCosta)

Attention has been paid to the blonde high ponytail, crimson lips and matching lacquered nails. The hands are important. Whether balled into fists or fingers fluttering, they’re in use, especially when playing Hamlet’s ex-friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (a clever surprise that can’t be spoiled).

Tom Piper’s set is wonderfully minimal. It’s an empty white walled space with three narrow windows that appear cut deeply into stone like those of a castle. These white flats serve as the ideal canvas for lighting designer Tyler Elich’s looming shadows, ghostly green light, and other unexpected flourishes of drama.

Izzard fills the stage. Her presence is huge, and her acting first-rate. At times, you forget it’s a one-person show.

I’d like to say, prior knowledge of the Bard’s best tragedy isn’t necessary to enjoy this fast-paced production. Despite a halved runtime and obscure words replaced with modern equivalents (“tedious old git” Hamlet says of Polonius), familiarity with the play is helpful.

With “The Tragedy of Hamlet,” Izzard secures a place among fellow queer Brits like Miriam Margolyes (“Dickens’ Women”), Sir Ian Mckellan (“Ian McKellen on Stage”), and more recently Andrew Scott (“Vanya”) in the solo players’ pantheon.

Izzard’s energized take on Hamlet is terrific. The way her powerful public persona bleeds into the work without taking over is exciting, and a uniquely accessible way to enjoy Shakespeare.

Calendar

Calendar: April 3-9

LGBTQ events in the days to come

Published

2 days ago

April 3, 2026

Tinashe Chingarande

Friday, April 3

Center Aging Monthly Luncheon With Yoga will be at 12 p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. Email Mac at [email protected] if you require ASL interpreter assistance, have any dietary restrictions, or questions about this event.

Go Gay DC will host “First Friday LGBTQ+ Community Social” at 7 p.m. at Silver Diner Ballston. This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Saturday, April 4

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.

Nellies Sports Bar will host “Nellies DC Drag Brunch” at 12 p.m. Come get served like a queen, by a queen at the top rated Drag Brunch in DC! Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers, for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets start at $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.

Monday, April 6

Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch 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 choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).

Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour Meetup” at 5:30 p.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar and restaurant. This event is ideal for making new friends. It’s free to attend. The group will gather inside at the purple booth to the left. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.

Tuesday, April 7

Universal Pride Meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group seeks to support, educate, empower, and create change for people with disabilities. For more details, email [email protected].

Wednesday, April 8

Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. 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 www.thedccenter.org/careers.

Thursday, April 9

The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. To be more fair with who is receiving boxes, the program is moving to a lottery system. 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 Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breathwork and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.

a&e features

Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights

Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’

Published

3 days ago

April 2, 2026

Evan Caplan

Anthony Jones (Photo by Joshua Foo)

In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.

Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).

Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.

Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.

Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.

Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.

Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.

“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.

While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”

Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”

Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”

“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”

Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”

Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”

Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”

Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”

Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”

Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.