Arts & Entertainment
Drag families support new queens, but D.C. needs more space for young performers
With steep competition, young talent turns to social media for exposure

In a sparkling gold dress with a high-cut bodysuit and fringe draped over her hipline, D.C. drag queen Anamosity rang in the new year with a high-energy performance that carried her off stage and closer to the audience.
Hollers and cheers from the crowd punctuated her fierce hair flips and striking hand gestures as the rookie queen aimed to impress venue hosts, audiences, and other queens to book more gigs in an increasingly competitive D.C. drag scene.
“One of my biggest challenges in drag is just definitely booking gigs,” Anamosity said. “[When I started,] it was difficult not knowing anyone [and] trying to make a name for yourself in the city.”
After a slew of anti-drag legislation was introduced in more than a dozen states, effectively banning performances in public spaces to prohibit minors from watching, anti-drag sentiment has scared some aspiring and veteran queens from participating in the art form. However, as the District experiences its “drag renaissance,” increased competition is challenging new queens trying to book shows.
Until 2018, the popular D.C. drag venue, Town Danceboutique, was the place to get booked for queens trying to make a name for themselves in downtown, LGBTQ nightlife, according to Venus Valhalla, a host at the gay bar Pitcher’s weekly drag show. But when the club closed, queens scrambled to any bar that would let them start new shows.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, entertainers held onto any shows they started and venues they secured. Then, as restaurants and bars reopened, the surge of opportunities led to heightened competition between veteran queens with networks ripe for booking and new queens vying for a chance to prove themselves, Anamosity added.
“The drag queens that want to do drag or are doing drag full time just end up getting more priority,” Animosity said. “It’s definitely a battle trying to get your name out there and develop connections in order to become part of the other [half of the entertainers] that can’t afford to do drag full time, but still want to be out and performing.”
For some queens, having a drag family is the connection that gets them on stage, according to Hennessey, whose drag family consists of a drag mother, drag sisters – including Anamosity – and a drag grandmother. These connections with veteran queens help newer entertainers book shows at venues that require a certain level of professionalism and performance quality.
These beyond-blood family networks also provide emotional and financial support to queens outside of drag, Hennessey noted. Sometimes this comes in the form of housing, but oftentimes, it’s seen through sharing costumes, wigs, and heels.
But between Drag Queen Story Hours and 21-plus night shows, there’s a gap in opportunities for young adults wanting to start in drag. While some family or 18-plus drag brunches offer more chances for young aspiring queens to perform, the digital drag sphere is presenting new ways for youth to find their drag community.
“Bedroom queens” performing from home are building their brand, portfolio, and following on social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok. Since younger and newer queens aren’t usually booking multiple shows a week because of high competition, they’re spending time shooting and editing content that advertises their talent.
Social media also supports the exposure and representation of queens who either aren’t ready to perform in front of an audience yet or struggle to find shows.
“There are a lot of Black drag queens in the city, I think that I don’t see them getting as many bookings as queens of other races,” Anamosity said. “I’m grateful for every booking that comes my way. But with the number of people of color in D.C., I just don’t think I see them much on flyers, so their online presence is great.”
These virtual networks also mean younger queens can build digital drag families from around the world, Hennessey added. However, there are still opportunities for D.C.’s drag scene to create spaces for young entertainers.
Last summer, the LGBTQ bar As You Are turned its venue into a cafe to host a day drag show open to all ages, specifically targeted to people under 24 years old. During the show, young folks filled the audience while others took the stage for the first time.
The drag house Casa Sin Miedo is also creating a safe space for young and emerging artists to grow their network. The house supports transgender and Latinx artists through mentorship that is vital to queer youth, who often don’t find similar role models at home, school, and even in the media.
But there’s no formal process to starting or finding a drag family.
“That’s what is the most beautiful part about it,” Hennessey said. “If you want to start your own family, you can really just do it. You just need one other person, and then you suddenly have a drag family.”

Arts & Entertainment
Shakira cancels WorldPride concert
Welcome event was set for Saturday at Nats Park

Internationally renowned singer Shakira’s WorldPride concert set for Saturday has been canceled, according to two knowledgeable sources who spoke to the Blade.
LiveNation and the Washington Nationals were expected to make a formal announcement Friday afternoon.
It’s unclear whether the WorldPride Welcome Concert that she was headlining will continue.
Shakira’s concert at Boston’s Fenway Park was abruptly canceled on Thursday reportedly due to issues with the safety of the stage.
The Blade will update this post as more details become available.
Movies
‘Pee-wee’ spills the tea in outstanding new documentary
Reubens’s sexuality emerges as the show’s focus

Most of us who have lived long enough to get nostalgic for our formative years have, by now, watched enough documentaries about a beloved entertainment icon from our past to know what to expect when a new one comes along.
Such offerings are typically slick biographical portraits blending archival material with newly filmed “talking head” reminiscences and commentaries, and perhaps punctuated by eye-catching animations or other flourishes to add an extra layer of visual interest; heavy on the nostalgia and mostly reverent in tone, they satisfy us with pleasant memories, supplement our knowledge with behind-the-history insights and revelations, and leave us – ideally – with a renewed appreciation and a reinforced feeling of comfortable familiarity. Many of them are little more than retrospectives, more glossy tribute than in-depth profile; occasionally, a few go beyond the surface to give us a deeper sense of personal connection with their subject – but rarely enough, even in the best of them, to make us feel as if we know them well.
No matter how many of these docs you have seen, however, or jaded your expectations may be when you approach it, “Pee-wee as Himself” is still going to surprise you.
Directed by filmmaker Matt Wolf, the two-part HBO docuseries – which premiered May 23 and is now streaming on Max – is built around material culled from 40 hours of interview footage with the late Paul Reubens (the creator and performer behind nerdy, manic cultural phenomenon and children’s show host “Pee-wee Herman,” for anyone that needs to be told), and conducts a “guided tour” of Reubens’ singular career in the limelight. The first installment traces a path from his Florida childhood through his early adventures as an actor and performance artist in Los Angeles to his rapid rise to fame and the popularity of his carefully crafted alter-ego; part two continues the story to explore the expansion of his fame through the phenomenon of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” but soon shifts gears to cover his sudden fall from grace after a notorious “public indecency” arrest in an adult theater, and the subsequent accusations of collecting “child pornography” that unfairly branded him as a pedophile in the public eye — and comes full circle to document his return to favor as an underdog hero for the generation that had grown up watching him.
Besides its detailed chronicle of these already-well-known chapters in Reubens’ life, however, Wolf’s doc (and Reubens, via frequent commentary throughout) delves into publicly uncharted territory to give us a look at something we’ve never been allowed to see before: Paul Reubens himself.
That includes, of course, removing any ambiguity that might remain about the sexuality of the man behind the bow tie, who never publicly identified as gay before his death from cancer in 2023. It’s not so much a “coming out” — after all, he artfully teased his queerness to fans for years — as it is a dropping of pretense. There’s no need for a definitive statement announcing something that everybody already knew, anyway.
That’s not to say he skirts the issue as he delivers his full-frame close-up testimonial to the camera; on the contrary, he reflects often and with bittersweet candor about the carefully-managed matter of his sexuality – or the public’s perception of it, at any rate – with the matter-of-fact eloquence of someone who’s spent a lot of time thinking about it. He openly discusses his choice to keep the closet door closed on his personal life in order to preserve Pee-wee’s ambiguously wholesome yet irresistibly subversive persona in the public’s imagination, and to abandon his openly queer life (as well as a loving long term relationship, one of the series’ biggest “reveals”) to do so.”I was as out as you could be,” he reflects with rueful irony, “and then I went back in the closet.”
Indeed, it’s Reubens’s sexuality that ultimately emerges as the show’s core focus — even more than the rich treasure trove of personal photos, home movies, behind-the-scenes footage, and all the other fan-thrilling delights it provides — and gives it a larger significance, perhaps than even the man himself. It’s a thread that runs through his story, impacting his choices and the trajectory of his career, and reflecting the familiar shared experience of many audience members who may be able to relate; later, it manifests on a societal level, as Wolf and his subject explore the homophobic attitudes behind the legal persecution that would bring his rising star into a tailspin and hang over his reputation for the rest of his life. It serves as both a reminder of the power of cultural bigotry to repress queerness and a cautionary tale about the personal cost of repressing oneself.
A good number of Reubens’ longtime friends (like Cassandra Petersen, aka “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” costar David Arquette, and former “girlfriend” Debi Mazar, who provided support, acceptance, and companionship in the wake of his legal troubles) come along for the ride, offering their own reminiscences and insights into the official record, as well as lesser-known members of an inner circle that comprised the late artist’s chosen family. Yet all these testimonials, authentic as they may be, are not what enable “Pee-wee as Himself” to bring us closer to the real Paul Reubens. It’s Reubens himself who does that.
Maintaining an ambiguously hostile edge in his interviews, bringing to light a clash for control between himself and director Wolf with as much clarity as he illuminates the vast archival material that is shown to document his career, he demonstrates firsthand the need to manage his own narrative, balking at, even openly resisting, certain questions and interpretations that arise throughout. It gives the real Reubens the same vague menace with which Pee-wee was also infused — and also creates a sort of meta-narrative, in which the conflict between subject and director must also be resolved before the story can truly achieve closure, calling into question whether Reubens (a veteran of avant-garde theater and lifelong fan of the circus) might not be adding yet another layer of mystery and performance to his image even as he gets honest publicly for the very first time.
That closure eventually comes in the form of a voice recording made by Reubens the day before his death — after a six year battle with lung cancer (he was a heavy smoker, another personal detail he painstakingly hid from the public) which, save for those in his innermost circle, he never revealed until the end — in which he delivers a final message to the world. With it, he finally accomplishes what he never could during his life, and lets us see, at last, who he was when he wasn’t being Pee-wee.
And it’s a beautiful thing.

The Opening Reception for the 34th annual D.C. Black Pride was held at the Capital Hilton on Friday, May 23. Presenters, speakers and entertainers included Ts Madison, Monroe Alise, Billy the Goat, Kerri Colby, Apple Brown Betty, Heather Mahogani, Lyrical Mar, Lolita Leopard, Ink, and Bang Garçon. Anthony Oakes was the host.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)




















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