Washington is host to many Pride celebrations, from the countless dance parties to the Capital Pride Parade, Concert and Festival, the city offers multiple chances to celebrate your Pride.
One of the ways to celebrate Pride — and a way put a bookend to the event-packed June Pride month — is to make sure to the annual District of PRIDE Showcase hosted by Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
This year’s event will showcase a range of local LGBTQ talent that includes drag performers, storytellers, and singers in the historic Lincoln Theater on Thursday, June 29.
“It’s a showcase of local LGBTQ A-plus talent,” says Japer Bowles, the Director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs. “It’s one of the last big events in the district and in the region that’s pride related and really it’s a celebration. It’s a great time.”
DJ Honey will be pumping the music throughout the night.
Bowles explained that now, in a time when drag is criminalized across the U.S., it is vital to provide a platform for drag performances.
“Throughout the entire program, we’re highlighting drag,” he says. “A party without cake is just a meeting, so we’ll be having Cake Pop! We’re celebrating Pretty Boy Pride with Pretty Boy Drag.”
The focus of the showcase, Bowles says, is to focus on Washington’s LGBTQ art scene. Nearly 90 performers submitted their applications to appear, and ten were chosen.
This talent, Bowles says, is special to Washington due to its high LGBTQ population and progressive LGBTQ policies. Washington ranks highest in the nation for an area with an LGBTQ population, currently at 9.8% according to UCLA’s Williams Institute.
“This does not happen in Oklahoma and this does not happen in Missouri and in Texas,” he says. “DC is the district of pride!”
Mayor Muriel Bowser’s fourth annual “District of Pride” is Thursday, June 29, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Lincoln Theatre, 1215 U St. NW. Admission is free. To reserve a space, register by visiting Eventbrite.
Things were looking rough when the queens of We're Here rode into the town that canceled Pride. It was summer 2023, a few short months since the Tennessee state legislature had passed the nation's first drag ban.
A U.S. District Court judge blocked the statewide implementation of the vaguely defined Tennessee Adult Entertainment Act, on the basis of First Amendment concerns. But that didn't stop the town council of Murfreesboro from passing a city indecency ordinance that likewise banned "male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest."
"It can be really difficult to navigate through the space and be heard," Anderson Wells says of JR.'s Bar & Grill. The storied 17th Street fixture, one of the oldest gay bars in D.C., isn't known as a harbinger of live theater or of the performing arts in general.
And yet, since 2019, JR.'s has presented occasional "live drag musicals" from Highball Productions, the drag theater troupe that Wells -- also known as drag queen Vagenesis -- co-founded with several other locals, including AJ Williamson, better known as Citrine.
"How is running up and down those stairs in heels? Are your fishnets going to get caught on the stage?" According to Wells, those are two crucial concerns that drag actors face as they go about rehearsing Highball shows at JR.'s. This month, the troupe will perform its ninth production, a Chicago-inspired spoof of a show they've titled Shecago as directed by Wells, whose day job is managing director of Constellation Theatre Company.
On Monday, D.C. leaders unveiled PUPs, a new pop-up permit program aimed at making it easier to transform vacant storefronts in the downtown area temporarily as the District continues to struggle following the pandemic four years ago.
Hampered by soaring rents that have led businesses to shed full-time office space as a cost-cutting measure, flexible telework policies instituted by employers, and fears around crime and homelessness, downtown D.C. is a shadow of its pre-pandemic self.
So D.C. is hoping to fill vacant office buildings with pop-up businesses by removing the bureaucratic hurdles that hamper businesses' ability to set up shop.
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