Arts & Entertainment
‘Stonewall 50’ expected to draw millions to NYC
Marches, rallies, celebrities to commemorate 50th anniversary of riots
Organizers of the many events this weekend in New York City to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, credited with launching the modern LGBT rights movement, say an expected turnout of 4.5 million people will make it the world’s largest ever LGBT Pride celebration.
In addition to the larger turnout expected from people from throughout the U.S., New York City Pride this year is the official host of World Pride, an international LGBT Pride event originally started in Europe that will take place for the first time this year in the United States.
Heritage of Pride, the group that has organized New York City’s LGBT Pride events for more than 20 years, has said more than 4 million people were expected to turn out for the official New York Pride March on Sunday, June 30. The group says about 115,000 people were expected to march in over 100 contingents and the remainder of the crowds would be lining the streets as spectators.
A spokesperson for Heritage of Pride said a large number of march contingents would be comprised of LGBT people and their supporters from other countries who were coming to New York to participate in World Pride events that began earlier this week.
Among the Heritage of Pride, or HOP, events planned for June 30 is the official World Pride Closing Ceremony beginning at 7 p.m. in New York’s Times Square, which will include “a slate of influential speakers” and big name entertainers. Among the entertainers scheduled to perform are Melissa Etheridge, Deborah Cox, Jake Shears, MNEK, and The Prom Musical. Lesbian comedian Margaret Cho will host the event.
The official New York City Pride March, organized by Heritage of Pride, is scheduled to kick off on Sunday at noon at 26th Street and 5th Avenue. It will travel past the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Greenwich Village, the site of the Stonewall riots, which has been designated a U.S. Historic Landmark.
The march will end in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Organizers and longtime activists in New York say in recent past years the march has lasted as long as eight hours or more and this year’s march could last even longer.
For the first time this year a dissident group in New York City, the Reclaim Pride Coalition, has organized a separate Queer Liberation March set to take place the same day as the official New York City Pride March on June 30.
But the Queer Liberation March is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., at the site of the Stonewall Inn bar in Greenwich Village. It will travel from its starting point at Sheridan Square in front of the Stonewall along 7th Avenue to 10th Street where it will turn onto 6th Avenue and travel to Central Park, where a rally will take place.
“The Queer Liberation March is a people’s political march – there will be no corporate floats, and no police in our march,” according to a statement released by the Reclaim Pride Coalition. “Our march is a truly grassroots action that will mobilize the community to address the many social and political battles that continue to be fought locally, nationally, and globally,” the statement says.
Although not as large as the World Pride closing ceremony in Times Square organized by Heritage of Pride, the Queer Liberation March Rally, set to take place on Central Park’s Great Lawn, will include speakers and performers. Among them will be nationally acclaimed playwright and co-founder of the AIDS protest group ACT UP, Larry Kramer.
Among those scheduled to perform at the rally are Kevin Aviance and the lesbian singing group Betty.
Activists in New York who have been following the plans for the two marches say many plan to participate in both since the Queer Liberation March will likely end before the New York Pride March begins at noon.
James Fallarino, a spokesperson for Heritage of Pride, has said that while corporate floats will take part in the New York City Pride March in their role as corporate sponsors, such floats will be far outnumbered by contingents made up of nonprofit LGBT or LGBT supportive organizations.
However, the New York City Pride website says that due to the large number of participants in the march, individuals interested in marching must be part of a group or contingent that has registered in advance to join the march. An individual that shows up on the day of the march won’t be allowed to join the march if he or she isn’t part of a preregistered contingent, although they will be allowed to watch the march on the sidelines, which will be fenced off from the street by security barriers set up by the New York City Police Department.
Ann Northrop, one of the lead organizers of the Queer Liberation March, said that march will allow anyone to join its ranks at any location along its route.
Northrop said for people unable to come to New York for the weekend events, organizers will be livestreaming the Queer Liberation March and rally on its website, reclaimpridenyc.org.
The New York City Pride March will be broadcast live from noon to 4 p.m. on WABC TV Channel 7, the ABC Television Network’s New York City affiliate station. It couldn’t immediately be determined whether out of town viewers could see the ABC7 broadcast through a livestreaming on the station’s website.
The following are some of the main events scheduled for this weekend by New York City Pride and the Reclaim Pride Coalition:
• Stonewall 50 Commemoration Rally—Friday, June 28, 6 p.m. at Christopher Street and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village
• Youth Pride—Saturday, June 29, 12 p.m. at Summer Stage in Central Park
• Pride Island Celebration—Saturday, June 29, 2 p.m.; Hudson River Park’s Pier 97. The event will feature big name entertainers, including legendary singer Grace Jones, Teyana Taylor, Kim Petras, Pabllo Vittar, and Amara La Negra.
• PrideFest street fair—Sunday, June 30; 11 a.m.; 4th Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place. The event includes exhibitors, entertainers and fun activities.
• Queer Liberation March—Sunday, June 30, 9:30 a.m., begins at Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village outside the Stonewall Inn. The march ends in Central Park, where a rally will be held.
• New York City Pride March—Sunday, June 30; 12 p.m.; begins at 26th Street and 5th Avenue. Grand marshals include the cast of “Pose,” Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Gay Liberation Front members, the Trevor Project, and Monica Helms.
• World Pride Closing Ceremony—Sunday, June 30; 7 p.m. in Times Square; Melissa Etheridge is among the entertainers scheduled to perform.
Movies
‘Hedda’ brings queer visibility to Golden Globes
Tessa Thompson up for Best Actress for new take on Ibsen classic
The 83rd annual Golden Globes awards are set for Sunday (CBS, 8 p.m. EST). One of the many bright spots this awards season is “Hedda,” a unique LGBTQ version of the classic Henrik Ibsen story, “Hedda Gabler,” starring powerhouses Nina Hoss, Tessa Thompson and Imogen Poots. A modern reinterpretation of a timeless story, the film and its cast have already received several nominations this awards season, including a Globes nod for Best Actress for Thompson.
Writer/director Nia DaCosta was fascinated by Ibsen’s play and the enigmatic character of the deeply complex Hedda, who in the original, is stuck in a marriage she doesn’t want, and still is drawn to her former lover, Eilert.
But in DaCosta’s adaptation, there’s a fundamental difference: Eilert is being played by Hoss, and is now named Eileen.
“That name change adds this element of queerness to the story as well,” said DaCosta at a recent Golden Globes press event. “And although some people read the original play as Hedda being queer, which I find interesting, which I didn’t necessarily…it was a side effect in my movie that everyone was queer once I changed Eilert to a woman.”
She added: “But it still, for me, stayed true to the original because I was staying true to all the themes and the feelings and the sort of muckiness that I love so much about the original work.”
Thompson, who is bisexual, enjoyed playing this new version of Hedda, noting that the queer love storyline gave the film “a whole lot of knockoff effects.”
“But I think more than that, I think fundamentally something that it does is give Hedda a real foil. Another woman who’s in the world who’s making very different choices. And I think this is a film that wants to explore that piece more than Ibsen’s.”
DaCosta making it a queer story “made that kind of jump off the page and get under my skin in a way that felt really immediate,” Thompson acknowledged.
“It wants to explore sort of pathways to personhood and gaining sort of agency over one’s life. In the original piece, you have Hedda saying, ‘for once, I want to be in control of a man’s destiny,’” said Thompson.
“And I think in our piece, you see a woman struggling with trying to be in control of her own. And I thought that sort of mind, what is in the original material, but made it just, for me, make sense as a modern woman now.”
It is because of Hedda’s jealousy and envy of Eileen and her new girlfriend (Poots) that we see the character make impulsive moves.
“I think to a modern sensibility, the idea of a woman being quite jealous of another woman and acting out on that is really something that there’s not a lot of patience or grace for that in the world that we live in now,” said Thompson.
“Which I appreciate. But I do think there is something really generative. What I discovered with playing Hedda is, if it’s not left unchecked, there’s something very generative about feelings like envy and jealousy, because they point us in the direction of self. They help us understand the kind of lives that we want to live.”
Hoss actually played Hedda on stage in Berlin for several years previously.
“When I read the script, I was so surprised and mesmerized by what this decision did that there’s an Eileen instead of an Ejlert Lovborg,” said Hoss. “I was so drawn to this woman immediately.”
The deep love that is still there between Hedda and Eileen was immediately evident, as soon as the characters meet onscreen.
“If she is able to have this emotion with Eileen’s eyes, I think she isn’t yet because she doesn’t want to be vulnerable,” said Hoss. “So she doesn’t allow herself to feel that because then she could get hurt. And that’s something Eileen never got through to. So that’s the deep sadness within Eileen that she couldn’t make her feel the love, but at least these two when they meet, you feel like, ‘Oh my God, it’s not yet done with those two.’’’
Onscreen and offscreen, Thompson and Hoss loved working with each other.
“She did such great, strong choices…I looked at her transforming, which was somewhat mesmerizing, and she was really dangerous,” Hoss enthused. “It’s like when she was Hedda, I was a little bit like, but on the other hand, of course, fascinated. And that’s the thing that these humans have that are slightly dangerous. They’re also very fascinating.”
Hoss said that’s what drew Eileen to Hedda.
“I think both women want to change each other, but actually how they are is what attracts them to each other. And they’re very complimentary in that sense. So they would make up a great couple, I would believe. But the way they are right now, they’re just not good for each other. So in a way, that’s what we were talking about. I think we thought, ‘well, the background story must have been something like a chaotic, wonderful, just exploring for the first time, being in love, being out of society, doing something slightly dangerous, hidden, and then not so hidden because they would enter the Bohemian world where it was kind of okay to be queer and to celebrate yourself and to explore it.’”
But up to a certain point, because Eileen started working and was really after, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to publish, I want to become someone in the academic world,’” noted Hoss.
Poots has had her hands full playing Eileen’s love interest as she also starred in the complicated drama, “The Chronology of Water” (based on the memoir by Lydia Yuknavitch and directed by queer actress Kristen Stewart).
“Because the character in ‘Hedda’ is the only person in that triptych of women who’s acting on her impulses, despite the fact she’s incredibly, seemingly fragile, she’s the only one who has the ability to move through cowardice,” Poots acknowledged. “And that’s an interesting thing.”
Arts & Entertainment
2026 Most Eligible LGBTQ Singles nominations
We are looking for the most eligible LGBTQ singles in the Washington, D.C. region.
Are you or a friend looking to find a little love in 2026? We are looking for the most eligible LGBTQ singles in the Washington, D.C. region. Nominate you or your friends until January 23rd using the form below or by clicking HERE.
Our most eligible singles will be announced online in February. View our 2025 singles HERE.
The Freddie’s Follies drag show was held at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington, Va. on Saturday, Jan. 3. Performers included Monet Dupree, Michelle Livigne, Shirley Naytch, Gigi Paris Couture and Shenandoah.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
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