After the muted and makeshift celebrations of the past two years, Pride month is busting out all over in 2022. And one of D.C.’s newest LGBTQ-owned venues is working to establish itself as a hub of Pride-related activity.
Over the next couple of weeks, Crazy Aunt Helen’s will host a variety of shows offering a veritable smorgasbord of LGBTQ-identified drag performers, comedians, and nascent playwrights and local actors.
The latter comes courtesy of a new play reading series that launched last month from D.C.’s queer-focused Rainbow Theatre Project.
The series, featuring casts of assembled local actors giving rehearsed, dramatic readings of stage works in development, continues with a reading of Faux Flowers, Anthony Green’s tale, set in present-day D.C., of “trauma turned to murder during an Easter dinner,” presented with a brief post-reading discussion with the playwright and cast. (6/15, $15)
The next night comes a reading of Author’s Note by Nell Quinn-Gibney, a new play that, to quote the brief official description, focuses on “high school explorations of sex and sexuality through a classic educational source: badly written fanfiction.” (6/16, $15)
The following week offers a “Pride Comedy Show!” touted as “the first-ever All Queer Comedy Show,” hosted by “the premiere drag queen stand-up comedian” Frieda Poussay and her band of misfits, including “the Minnesota leader of the Dick train” Anja Dick, the award-winning female comedian Miss Chocolate, funny local LINOs (Ladies In Name Only) Ba’Naka and Dabatha Christie, and “the hardest-working D.C. king of comedy,” Gray West. (6/23, $15)
It’s followed by “Pride-A-Palooza,” a variety show with live music, comedy, and lip-synching featuring queens Anja Dick and Tula, resident queen Tara Hoot as host, plus the promise of “special guests, dinner, prizes, and more!” (6/25, $20)
New York PBS affiliate WNET has removed three educational episodes addressing transgender identity and drag expression from its archives, following threats from congressional conservatives and the Trump administration to defund public broadcasting.
One targeted program was a 2021 episode of the educational series Let’s Learn, titled “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish.” The episode featured drag queen and children’s author Lil Miss Hot Mess reading from her book of the same name—a playful take on the classic nursery rhyme “The Wheels on the Bus.”
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