‘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 

American Opera Initiative
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater
Jan. 18, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
$25.00 – $39.00
Kennedy-center.org

For those who find traditional opera off-putting or mired in the past, there’s the American Opera Initiative (AOI). Now in its 12th season, the Washington National Opera’s well-known program pairs composers and librettists who under mentorship spend months collaborating on new work, culminating with the premiere of three 20-minute operas. 

Included in this year’s exciting group are queer artists JL Marlor and Omar Najmi. While these multi-taskers lend their composition talents to AOI, they are also performers and arts administrators. Marlor’s bio includes electric guitarist, and performer (she fronts the celebrated indie rock band Tenderheart Bitches), and Najmi divides most of his time writing music and performing as an operatic tenor. 

Marlor and librettist Claire Fuyuko Bierman’s “Cry, Wolf” is a short yet probing opera about three males (a late teen and two college age) who are navigating some dark internet ideologies. The work explores how the red-pilled manosphere pipeline serves as spaces of community for some people. 

“To me it’s a very timely piece inspired by an outlook that has consequences in the real world.”  She adds, “We’ve heard a lot about how angry incels [involuntary celibates] think about women. I want to hear what incels think about themselves.”

While Marlor tends to gravitate toward more serious opera pieces, Fuyuko Bierman, whose background includes standup, tends toward humor.

“I think this work brought out the best in both of us. The libretto feels like a comedy until suddenly it doesn’t.”

Marlor was introduced to opera through osmosis. At her gay uncles’ house there was always music – usually Maria Callas or Beverly Sills. She appreciated grand opera but not with the same ardor of true buffs. But her relationship with opera changed dramatically while attending Smith College.

“I was lucky enough to have Kate Soper as my first composition teacher and saw her opera ‘Here Be Sirens’ as my first piece of modern opera. I was totally hooked.” 

Originally from picturesque Beverly, Mass., Marlor now lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their very senior dog. For Marlor, coming out at 25 in 2017 wasn’t entirely smooth, but finding support among the many queer women in the world of classical music helped. And more recently, AOI has bolstered her confidence in continuing a career in the arts, she says. 

Najmi and librettist Christine Evans’ opera is titled “Mud Girl.” Set against a post-apocalyptic, climate-affected world, it’s the story of a mother, daughter, and the daughter’s child Poly, created from toxic detritus, trying to navigate relationships. 

“Most people go into opera without having had a ton of exposure.  Often through musical theater or choir,” says Najmi, 37. In his case, he was pursuing a BFA in musical theater at Ithaca College. After an unanticipated internal transfer to the School of Music, where he transitioned from baritone to young gifted tenor, his interest veered toward opera. 

While enjoying a performance career, he wrote his first opera on a whim. “And now,” he says “composition is my creative passion. Singing is more like a trade or sport. I love the action of doing it and practicing.” 

In one of his recent operas, “Jo Dooba So Paar,” Najmi, who is half Pakistani American, draws specifically from personal experience, exploring how queer and Muslim don’t necessarily need to be conflicting identities. And while he grew up in liberal Boston in a secular environment, he still had insights into what it means to exist in two worlds. It’s a story he wanted to tell.  

On a broader level, he says coming of age in the 1990s and aughts, on the cusp of homosexuality becoming normalized and accepted, created certain angsts. Today, his artist’s voice is drawn to the sentimentality that comes with unrequited longing.

What’s more, Najmi collaborates with his husband Brendon Shapiro. In 2022, the Boston-based couple co-founded Catalyst New Music, an organization dedicated to fostering, developing, and producing new works. 

AOI’s three 20-minute operas will be led by conductor George Manahan and performed by Cafritz Young Artists on Jan. 18, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. 

Following their world premiere at the Kennedy Center, the three operas will travel to New York City in a co-presentation with the Kaufman Music Center. The Jan. 23 performance will mark AOI’s first appearance in New York City.

For D.C. theater, it’s been a year of engaging premiers, reprises, and some particularly strong performances. Here are a few of the standouts. 

At Round House Theatre, 2024 kicked off with “Next to Normal,” Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s masterful alt-rock musical. Strikingly helmed by out director Alan Paul, the production featured a marvelous Tracy Lynn Olivera as Diana Goodman, a homemaker struggling with mental illness. 

Despite years of scary manic episodes, med adjustments, and endless flat days filled with robotically performed household chores and married life, she maintains a wry sense of humor peppered with sarcastic asides.

At Studio Theatre in spring, nonbinary playwright Bryna Turner’s “At the Wedding” made a regional debut with a production directed by Tom Story. The queer comedy about a woman crashing her ex’s wedding and hoping not to make a scene.

Also in spring, GALA Hispanic Theatre, Gustavo Ott and Mariano Vale’s “The Return of Eva Perón: Momia en el closet” a dark musical comedy filled with history and madness starred out actor Fran Tapia as the taxidermized former first lady. She was terrific. 

Set against the harsh landscape of World War I, “Private Jones” a new musical written and directed by Marshall Pailet, premiered at Signature Theatre in Arlington in February.

The production featured a cast of hearing, Deaf, and hard-of-hearing actors including Dickie Drew Hearts, the Deaf, gay, and appealing actor who won an Obie Award for “Dark Disabled Stories,” a Public Theatre production. 

At Signature, Hearts played Henry, a Deaf munitions worker. At the time, he told the Blade, “I know that queer people have always been here and I like to infuse that into the characters I play whether or not it’s stated. I look for those moments of where it might be hinting at sexuality, and ask what was it like at the time, was it safe to be out?”

Throughout summer’s Capital Fringe, D.C.’s annual edgy performing arts festival, there was ample opportunity to see some new and different things.  

Included in the offerings was work by Sharp Dance Company performed at DCJCC in Dupont.  Sharp company member Wren Coleman, a transmasculine dancer and educator based in Philadelphia, described the group as very LGBTQ friendly and noted that their summer dances were of particular interest to queer people. 

In July, Stephen Mark Lukas brought his good looks and considerable talent to the Kennedy Center Opera where he played Nick Arnstein, the love interest of Katerina McCrimmon’s Fanny Brice in the national tour of the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl.” 

“These older book musicals are character driven and have great scores,” he shared. “It’s what makes them relevant today. On the surface they might feel dated, but there’s also the contemporary humor and romance.”

As a leading man in musical theater, Lukas has played the straight love interest more than once, but he’s never been too concerned about his sexuality getting in the way of the work. “The acting takes care of that,” he said. 

In North Bethesda, Strathmore dedicated two months to celebrating the greatness of James Baldwin. programming included live musical and theatrical events celebrating the late writer’s genius. 

In late September, Tony Award winning out actor Gavin Creel, 48, died from a rare and aggressive cancer.

Just a year and a half earlier, he’d been at the Kennedy Center headlining with a national tour of the Broadway hit production of “Into to the Woods.” He played both the lascivious Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince, two terrific scene stealing roles that allowed him to show off his gorgeous voice and comedic magic.

In December, much-admired children’s television screenwriter and producer Chris Nee went from TV to stage at the Kennedy Center with “Finn,” her heartwarming musical about a young shark who dreams of following in his family’s footsteps by joining the prestigious Shark Guard and the challenges and moments of self-discovery he faces along the way. 

Nee is best known for being the creator of the popular Disney animated series “Doc McStuffins” (the first Disney show to air an episode featuring an interracial lesbian couple as well as other kids’ shows “Ridley Jones” and “Vampirina.”  

And at Studio Theatre, out actor/director Holly Twyford moves into the new year starring opposite Kate Eastwood Norris in David Auburn’s “Summer, 1976” (through Jan. 12), a wonderfully acted memory play about two very different women and their longtime friendship.