‘Hand to God’
Feb. 1-March 2
Keegan Theatre
1742 Church St., N.W.
$49-$59
Keegantheatre.org

Luke Hartwood has loved puppets for as long as he can remember. 

At 24, he’s indulging his passion as puppet designer/coach and properties designer for Keegan Theatre’s production of Robert Askins’ “Hand to God.” It’s the Tony-nominated comedy about meek Jason who after the death of his father finds an outlet for his anxiety at the Christian Puppet Ministry in small town Texas.

Puppets begin as a design team collaboration, Hartwood explains, and move on from there. With “Hand to God,” the playwright’s notes describe Jason’s badly behaved puppet Tyrone as looking “Elmo-y and shit,” but beyond that there’s room for some interpretation. 

Hartwood, who is gay and Asian American, graduated from George Mason University in May 2023. He majored in theater with a double concentration in performance and design/technology, and minored in graphic design. 

“With all my varied interests that’s what made sense to me,” he says. “It wasn’t easy but now I’m a flexible candidate when interviewing for work. I’m skilled in design and the physical fabrication of puppets. And I also act.”

Based in Northern Virginia, he’s been with his partner for six years. Recently, Hartwood shared his thoughts on puppetry and what he wants from the future. 

WASHINGTON BLADE: What’s the attraction to puppets?

LUKE HARTWOOD:  I’ve always loved puppets. It started as a kid watching cartoons, I’d pause the TV get out a sheet of paper and draw a character, usually Pokémon and Digimon. I learned to use shapes, rounded or sharp edges depending if I wanted to make it cute or scary. I moved from 2-D to 3-D using cereal boxes to give dimension to the drawings. Once I carved a character into the wood of my mom’s sideboard. She wasn’t happy.

BLADE: Were puppets your way into theater? 

HARTWOOD: Not exactly. Despite some fear, I started acting when I was a sophomore in high school. I was a shy kid, but I wanted to be in theater. With me, I also brought my love of art and soon began working on props. It wasn’t unusual to see me in costume backstage between scenes building props. 

BLADE: And you continued in college?

HARTWOOD: Mine was the dreaded COVID college experience and the creation of Zoom theater. When we finally came back to live theater, my stage fright returned too. But I got past that and acted in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” [Hartwood was cast as the titular blockhead]. It’s a low-tech show; I did cutouts in the style of Peanuts characters. That was fun. 

BLADE:  With “Hand to God” at Keegan you’re really multitasking. Tell me a little bit about working with actors. 

HARTWOOD:  During casting, the actors were asked to bring a sock to use as a puppet. Not to show expertise but to prove some potential. 

Actor Drew Sharpe plays both Jason and his puppet Tyrone throughout the show; it’s like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. 

We start with basics. But then we retrain the way an actor thinks about a puppet. Not only is he marking up his script with his own blocking and intentions, but he’s also doing the same thing for his puppet. It’s playing two roles simultaneously. I’m in awe of how quickly Drew has learned and improved over the last few weeks.

BLADE: Does being queer affect your project choices? 

HARTWOOD: I try to incorporate my queerness into theater. For a while I didn’t know how to do that. I’m not writing plays or activist pieces, but I’m selective of what shows I do. I like to dedicate time to shows I care about, particularly those involving the queer and POC communities. Sometimes that means working with a smaller theater and not getting paid as much.

BLADE: Is money a concern? 

HARTWOOD: I recently quit my full-time corporate job as a business analyst at a government contracting company to focus fully on theater. If I’m going to spend 40 hours of my week doing something I better love it. 

I was picturing myself in 10, 20, or 30 years. If I push my artistry now, there’s more time for me to become successful or to get my big break. 

Also, I just graduated from bartending school. That should help pay the bills. 

BLADE: How does “Hand to God” jibe with your professional ethos? 

HARTWOOD: Really well. Though not explicitly written for the queer community or POC, it explores grief, toxic masculinity and what it means to be “man enough.” And that resonates with a lot of queer folks. 

And, I’m definitely here for the puppets 

‘When the Band Played On’
By Michael G. Lee
c.2025, Chicago Review Press
$30/282 pages

You spent most of your early career playing second fiddle.

But now you’ve got the baton, and a story to tell that people aren’t going to want to hear, though it’s essential that they face the music. They must know what’s happening. As in the new book “When the Band Played On” by Michael G. Lee, this time, it’s personal.

Born in 1951 in small-town Iowa, Randy Shilts was his alcoholic, abusive mother’s third of six sons. Frustrated, drunk, she reportedly beat Shilts almost daily when he was young; she also called him a “sissy,” which “seemed to follow Randy everywhere.”

Perhaps because of the abuse, Shilts had to “teach himself social graces,” developing “adultlike impassiveness” and “biting sarcasm,” traits that featured strongly as he matured and became a writer. He was exploring his sexuality then, learning “the subtleties of sexual communication,” while sleeping with women before fully coming out as gay to friends.

Nearing his 21st birthday, Shilts moved to Oregon to attend college and to “allow myself love.” There, he became somewhat of an activist before leaving San Francisco to fully pursue journalism, focusing on stories of gay life that were “mostly unknown to anyone outside of gay culture.”

He would bounce between Oregon and California several times, though he never lost sight of his writing career and, through it, his activism. In both states, Shilts reported on gay life, until he was well known to national readers and gay influencers. After San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk was assassinated, he was tapped to write Milk’s biography.

By 1982, Shilts was in love, had a book under his belt, a radio gig, and a regular byline in a national publication reporting “on the GRID beat,” an acronym later changed to AIDS. He was even under contract to write a second book.

But Shilts was careless. Just once, careless.

“In hindsight,” says Lee, “… it was likely the night when Randy crossed the line, becoming more a part of the pandemic than just another worried bystander.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, there are two distinct audiences for “When the Band Played On.” One type of reader will remember the AIDS crisis and the seminal book about it. The other is too young to remember it, but needs to know Randy Shilts’s place in its history.

The journey may be different, but the result is the same: author Michael G. Lee tells a complicated, still-controversial story of Shilts and the book that made America pay attention, and it’s edgy for modern eyes. Lee clearly shows why Shilts had fans and haters, why Shilts was who he was, and Lee keeps some mystery in the tale. Shilts had the knowledge to keep himself safe but he apparently didn’t, and readers are left to wonder why. There’s uncomfortable tension in that, and a lot of hypothetical thinking to be had.

For scholars of gay history, this is an essential book to read. Also, for anyone too young to remember AIDS as it was, “When the Band Played On” hits the right note.

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The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host “Prioritizing Self-Care & Community Care in 2025 Workshop” on Wednesday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m.

This will be an engaging conversation about how to prioritize self-care and community care in the upcoming year. This one-hour workshop will be facilitated by Program Director & Psychotherapist Jocelyn Jacoby. This workshop is designed to be a place where LGBTQ people can be in community with each other as the community grapples with fear and hope and comes up with practical ways to promote resiliency.

Registration for this event is mandatory and can be accessed on the DC Center’s website.