Arts & Entertainment
Tony Awards: De Niro slams Trump, Parkland students perform
‘The Band’s Visit,’ ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ win big
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, performing Rent’s ‘Seasons Of Love’ at the 2018 Tony Awards (Screenshot via Twitter)
The 72nd annual Tony Awards, hosted by Rachel Bloom, featured a clean sweep from “The Band’s Visit” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two” as well as plenty of onstage antics.
“The Band’s Visit” won 10 awards including Best Musical, Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical and Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two” won six awards including Best Play and Best Director. Another notable win was “Angels in America” for Best Revival of a Play. Andrew Garfield also won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for “Angels in America.”
The ceremony included many memorable moments but Robert De Niro’s not so subtle dig at President Donald Trump appeared to be a crowd favorite.
“First, I wanna say, ‘f**k Trump,'” De Niro said before introducing Bruce Springsteen. “It’s no longer ‘Down with Trump,’ it’s ‘f**k Trump.”
His bleeped out statement was met with wild applause.
Robert De Niro’s popularity is suddenly rising in Canada. pic.twitter.com/30LPxiWg7f #TonyAwards
— David Beard (@dabeard) June 11, 2018
Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Drama Club performed the classic song “Seasons of Love” from the musical “Rent.” Their rendition earned them a standing ovation from the crowd.
Nearly five months after tragedy struck their school, drama students from Parkland, Florida, took to the Tony’s stage with an emotional rendition of “Seasons of Love.” https://t.co/sAwQVVlwZL pic.twitter.com/wJEEWaIACn
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 11, 2018
Also that night, their drama teacher Melody Herzfeld was honored with a Tony Award for excellence in theater education.
Herzfeld hid 65 of her students in her office for two hours during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting.
“I’m overwhelmed. But I hope that this award will remind everyone of how vital and important arts education is to our kids. Drama, music, art, creative writing that’s how you make good citizens,” Herzfeld said in her acceptance speech.
Offstage, Neil Patrick Harris and Bloom got into an awkward Twitter interaction when Harris didn’t recognize the “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” star.
“Who is the woman in the top hat backstage at @TheTonyAwards? Gideon remarked that she says ‘like’ and ‘oh my god’ a lot. I’m confused,” Harris tweeted during the ceremony.
Who is the woman in the top hat backstage at @TheTonyAwards? Gideon remarked that she says ‘like’ and ‘oh my god’ a lot. I’m confused…
— Neil Patrick Harris (@ActuallyNPH) June 11, 2018
Bloom responded that she did, in fact, know Harris.
“I’m a big fan of yours,” Bloom replied. “We’ve met numerous times and my husband, Dan Gregor, wrote for ‘How I Met Your Mother’ for 5 years. Notably, he wrote the episode where your character finally meets his father.”
I’m a big fan of yours. We’ve met numerous times and my husband, Dan Gregor, wrote for “How I Met Your Mother” for 5 years. Notably, he wrote the episode where your character finally meets his father.
— Rachel Bloom (@Racheldoesstuff) June 11, 2018
Harris didn’t apologize for the slip but tweeted, “Indeed! Well said. Thanks for the reminder. How was backstage?”
Indeed! Well said. Thanks for the reminder. How was backstage?
— Neil Patrick Harris (@ActuallyNPH) June 11, 2018
See the complete list of winners below.
Best Book of a Musical
“The Band’s Visit”
“Frozen”
“Mean Girls”
“SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical”
Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre
“Angels in America”
“The Band’s Visit”
“Frozen”
“Mean Girls”
“SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play
Andrew Garfield, “Angels in America”
Tom Hollander, “Travesties”
Jamie Parker, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two”
Mark Rylance, “Farinelli and The King”
Denzel Washington, “Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play
Glenda Jackson, “Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women”
Condola Rashad, “Saint Joan”
Lauren Ridloff, “Children of a Lesser God”
Amy Schumer, “Meteor Shower”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical
Harry Hadden-Paton, “My Fair Lady”
Joshua Henry, “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel”
Tony Shalhoub, “The Band’s Visit”
Ethan Slater, “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical
Lauren Ambrose, “My Fair Lady”
Hailey Kilgore, “Once On This Island”
LaChanze, Summer: “The Donna Summer Musical”
Katrina Lenk, “The Band’s Visit”
Taylor Louderman, “Mean Girls”
Jessie Mueller, “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play
Anthony Boyle, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two”
Michael Cera, “Lobby Hero”
Brian Tyree Henry, “Lobby Hero”
Nathan Lane, “Angels in America”
David Morse, Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play
Susan Brown, “Angels in America”
Noma Dumezweni, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two”
Deborah Findlay, “The Children”
Denise Gough, “Angels in America”
Laurie Metcalf, Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical
Norbert Leo Butz, “My Fair Lady”
Alexander Gemignani, “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel”
Grey Henson, “Mean Girls”
Gavin Lee, “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical”
Ari’el Stachel, “The Band’s Visit”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical
Ariana DeBose, “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical”
Renée Fleming, “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel”
Lindsay Mendez, “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel”
Ashley Park, “Mean Girls Diana Rigg, My Fair Lady”
Best Direction of a Play
Angels in America
Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women
Travesties
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh
Best Direction of a Musical
Once On This Island
The Band’s Visit
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
Mean Girls
My Fair Lady
Best Play
“The Children”
“Farinelli and The King”
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two”
“Junk”
“Latin History for Morons”
Best Revival of a Play
“Angels in America”
Edward Albee’s, “Three Tall Women”
Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh”
“Lobby Hero”
“Travesties”
Best Musical
“The Band’s Visit”
“Frozen”
“Mean Girls”
“SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical”
Photos
PHOTOS: Remove the Regime rally and march
Dropkick Murphys, Earth to Eve perform on steps of Lincoln Memorial
The Remove the Regime rally and march was held on Saturday, Nov. 22.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Nov. 20. The event was emceed by Rayceen Pendarvis and Dwight Venson. Musical selections were provided by Agape Praise and Dynamic Praise. Proclamations from the D.C. Council and the D.C. Office of the Mayor were presented. The Pouring of the Libation was conducted by Rev. Elder Akousa McCray and Rev. Paul Fulton-Woods of Unity Fellowship Church.
Remarks were given by trans survivors of violence. Family members of slain trans woman Dream Johnson were featured speakers. Prayers were given by Rev. Cathy Alexander and Rev. Dwayne Johnson of Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. Yael Shafritz gave a Jewish prayer through a video presentation. Closing remarks were given by community leader, Earline Budd.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Books
Pioneering gay journalist takes on Trump 2.0 in new book
Nick Benton’s essays appeared in Fall Church News-Press
Nicholas Benton is a well-known local LGBTQ advocate and journalist and the longtime owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper.
In his eighth book out now, Benton offers a new set of remarkable essays all crafted in the first eight months of Trump 2.0 and its wholesale effort at dismantling democracy and the rule of law. Most were published in the Falls Church News-Press, but he adds a new piece to this volume, as an addendum to his “Cult Century” series, revealing for the first time his experiences from decades ago in the political cult of Lyndon LaRouche, aimed at providing a clearer grasp of today’s Cult of Trump.
His “Please Don’t Eat Your Children” set takes off from the satire of Jonathan Swift to explore society’s critical role of drumming creativity out of the young.
Below is an excerpt from “Please Don’t Eat Your Children, Cult Century, and other 2025 Essays.”
Please Don’t Eat Your Children
In his famous short essay, “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public,” author and Anglican priest Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) uses cutting satire to suggest that cannibalism of the young might help solve a battery of social ills.
As we examine our broken society today, it seems to me that reflecting on Swift’s social critique can be quite useful. Now we face a nation filled with anger and division and there is little to suggest any real solutions other than insisting people “don’t do that!” We can start out with the observation that young children, left to their own, are neither hateful nor cruel. How do they get that way later on in their lives? What drives them toward such emotional states and behaviors? It is not a problem only for the margins of society, for the extreme misfits or troubled. It is defining the very center of our culture today. Our divisions are not the cause, but the result of something, and nobody is saying what that is.
Swift doesn’t say what it is in his biting little essay. But it is implied by a context of a lack of bounty, or poverty, on the one hand, and an approach to it characterized by obscenely cruel indifference, on the other. He coined the phrase “useless eaters” in defining his radical solution. In Hitler’s Germany, that term resonated through the death camps and some in our present situation are daring to evoke it again as the current administration pushes radical cuts in Medicaid funding.
But while that refers to the old and infirm, mostly, it is the young we are talking about here. The problem is that our society is structured to devour our young and as they begin to find that out, they rebel. Not in all cases is this the practice, of course. Where there is little or no lack, things are different. We nurture our young, as we should, and we love them. Lucky is the child who is born to parents who are of means, and in a community where nurture is possible and valued. But even such children are ultimately not immune from facing a destiny of pale conformity battered by tightly delimited social expectations and debt slavery. If they have enough ambition, education and doors opened for them, some can run the gauntlet with relative effectiveness. Otherwise, our young are raised to die on battlefields, or to struggle in myriad other painful social conflicts aimed at advancing the world of their elders. In the Bible, there is a great admonition against this process that comes at the very precondition for the tradition it represents that begins with Abraham.
It is in the book of Genesis at the beginning of the Biblical story when, as that story goes, God commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. As Abraham is about to obey, God steps in and says no. The entire subsequent eons-long struggle to realize Abraham’s commission by God to make a great nation that would be a light to the world would have been cut short right then if Abraham had slain his own son. The message is that all of the Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, owe their source, and in fact are rooted, in God’s command to reject the sacrifice of children to the whims of their elders. The last thousands of years can be best defined in these terms, where nurture is pitted against exploitation of our young with, at best, vastly mixed results. Scenes like that at the opening of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the World War I novel and film where a teacher rallies a classroom full of boys to enlist in the war, is bone chilling. Or, the lyric in Pink Floyd’s iconic song, Comfortably Numb, “When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone.”
Nick Benton’s new book is available now at Amazon.
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