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Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir, which the pop superstar released in 2017. As she tells it, Lauper was especially distraught hearing stories in which her grandmother, her mother, and her aunt were each dissuaded or denied chances to pursue their individual dreams or opportunities — and all solely because of their gender.

Low-Hanging Fruit: Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues from My Gay Agenda (St. Martin’s Press, $28), the comedian whose scorchingly satirical, magnificently crafted YouTube videos set the internet ablaze whenever a new one drops, presents his case for taking on the highest office of the land. It’s one chapter nestled in a book filled with tremendous wit, bitchy zing, and wildly zany observations from a satirist who has become this generation’s Tom Lehrer.“It’s not a memoir,” Rainbow says of the book during a recent chat.

First Folio. That seminal 1623 publication, the first book to print a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, many of them for the first time, also factors into the new exhibition.

Metro Weekly cover. As the photographer shows off his preference for old-school camera bodies with physical dials, as opposed to digital interfaces, a casually dressed Broderick listens intently.

The Apprentice anticipating one particular turning point in the pair’s complicated relationship.Donald turning his back on Roy, when the notorious fixer was dying of an AIDS-related illness, wasn’t like the offhanded betrayal of a business interest, wife, or moral principle. Although, Abbasi (Holy Spider) and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman (Independence Day: Resurgence) supply ample scenes of their Donald, embodied spectacularly by Sebastian Stan, betraying trusts.Ranging around the film’s glamorous yet grimy 1970s/1980s New York City, Donald indulges in a near-daily diet of deceit and disloyalty, and absolutely no one is exempt from his dishonesty.

video. “As far as I can see, there’s really only one question to answer as we decide who we want for our next president, and that is: Do we want to continue our democracy, civil liberties, and free elections, or do we want a ‘wannabe dictator,’ by his own words, who will go after our freedoms one by one, dismantle them, and then take vengeance on all who disagreed with him?”Welcome to my page! Now more then ever we must have open discussion and talk to our neighbors like our life depends on it! Because well….it does.

rapist.” Or, “They say you’ve stalked teen contestants in various stages of undress backstage at your beauty pageants.” Better yet, “People say to me, Ma’am, Mme. Vice President, he’s been impotent for a number of years.” Just telling you what I’ve heard.Any one of those lines would have generated quite a bit of attention.

Greatest Hits Deluxe Edition.A genre-spanning concept album, Greatest Hits is a collection of all-time greats by a fictional pop superstar with hits from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Inspired by the sounds of Motown, doo-wop, gospel, disco, musical theatre, and the Great American Songbook, Duff channels his character’s evolution from crooner to pop-rocker on tongue-in-cheek tracks like “Forgotten How to F*ck” and “Hoe Is Life,” featuring The Life Tony winner Lillias White.“She really loved the lyrics of everything I do,” Duff says of Broadway powerhouse White, who also jumped on his 2021 single “High Heels” after hearing the song played over the phone.

Just when I was ready to declare that Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t a musical, it turned into one. Despite any confusion or misdirection that preceded its release, and notwithstanding that the film eases slowly into having its characters say their piece in song, director Todd Phillips’ sequel to his grim 2019 hit Joker eventually does let its musical-loving freak flag fly.Though, unlike the Hollywood musicals the movie references through posters, clips, and song and design choices, Folie à Deux doesn’t exude joy or winsome romance.

Edior’s Note: Gavin Creel passed away at age 48 after a short battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. This lovely and insightful interview he gave to the magazine was published in Feb. 2023, when Creel was appearing at the Kennedy Center in Into the Woods. We are reviving it briefly on our homepage to pay tribute to his memory. He was beloved by the theater community and all those who crossed his path.“I’ve been lucky enough to be in eight Broadway shows, all of which have been pretty varied.

“I feel extremely grateful for the result of the court case. I feel blessed,” says Diana Portillo, a transgender immigrant who recently won a historic judgment relating to a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the owner of the McDonald’s franchise for which she worked.

Red One.They’re hoping to keep the box office humming with Oscar bets and big stars: Tom Hanks re-teaming with Gump guide Robert Zemeckis for Here, Denzel Washington brushing off his period English in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga terrorizing Gotham in Joker: Folie à Deux.Big names aren’t the only draw, as big-time sensuality seeps through so many offerings this year. Erstwhile secret agent Daniel Craig leads the sexy charge this fall as a writer undone by his attraction to a younger man in Luca Guadagnino’s steamy Queer.

Hill Rag in 1984, as a wide-eyed novice to the local performing arts scene, I remember thinking, “How much theater could there be to fill a weekly column?” A lot, it turned out.I still mourn the loss of the companies I once frequented, among them Leslie Jacobson’s Horizons and Bart Whiteman’s Source, where the work was always challenging, insightful, and fueled by passion and purpose.By the same token, I marveled at the slow but steady growth of companies like Woolly Mammoth, who went from performing in a church on G Street to operating their own gorgeous downtown space.And I was frequently left in awe by the soaring works of legendary directors like Joy Zinoman, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Michael Kahn.There was even a point in my reviewing career that I was at the Kennedy Center so often — back in the days when Peter Sellars turned the nation’s performing arts center into a mind-warping experimental playground — I used to joke it was my second home.In 40 years, I’ve watched the D.C. theater landscape evolve and only get bigger and more consequential.

202-265-0930www.930.comMcLean Community Center 1234 Ingleside Ave. McLean, Va. 703-790-0123www.mcleancenter.org901 Wharf St. SW. 202-888-0020www.theanthemdc.com2047 9th St. NW 202-579-9950www.theatlantis.com1333 H St.

The Nutcracker with Winter Stories, featuring world-premiere works inspired by the cold of winter.We’ll see several world premieres to go along with Nutcrackers performed in every style, from ballet to cirque. And humor and joy pirouette throughout the season, which also portends intriguing turns into the shadows with productions like American Ballet Theatre’s Crime and Punishment at the Kennedy Center, and Manassas Ballet Theatre’s Dracula at Hylton Performing Arts.Bursting with ballerinas and acrobats and tap-happy Santas, it should be a killer fall and winter for dance around D.C.1333 H St.

The 22+ Weddings of Hugo, currently at GALA Hispanic Theatre in José Zayas’ suspenseful D.C. premiere production.

2023 study by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ crisis intervention and suicide prevention nonprofit, found that 15% of LGBTQ youth reported being subjected to conversion therapy, with that subgroup being more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide over the past year than individuals who never underwent conversion therapy.Beshear, an LGBTQ ally, noted that he still hopes Kentucky lawmakers will take action to ban such practices but issued the order due to a lack of action by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.Lawmakers previously overrode a veto Beshear issued of a sweeping anti-LGBTQ bill that bars gender-affirming care for minors, prohibits schools from acknowledging student’s gender identities and pronouns, and blocks LGBTQ-related content from being talked about in schools.“To me, [the issue is] not even about gender or sexuality. It’s about protecting our youth from an inhumane practice that hurts them,” Beshear said during the signing on September 17.He pushed back on critics who claim that banning conversion therapy infringes on anti-LGBTQ individuals’ free speech rights or forces individuals to adopt beliefs that may conflict with their religious views.“Today’s action does not force an ideology on anybody.

disastrous debate performance in late June.Trump cast Harris’s plans as overly simplistic, saying her economic policy was as short as “four sentences,” summarizing it as “Run, Spot, run.”What appeared to be another pre-rehearsed line was a Trump statement that Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” combining two issues that fire up Republican-leaning voters.Trump delivered the line while trying to cast Harris as a “radical left liberal,” referencing a CNN story, dropped a day before the debate, regarding Harris’s response to a 2019 questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union.In the questionnaire responses, Harris reportedly affirmed her support for allowing state funds to cover health treatments deemed medically necessary for incarcerated transgender individuals and publicly supported cutting funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.While the two issues are separate, they have been conflated as the same issue within right-wing echo chambers.

vitriol directed against members of the LGBTQ community and other political enemies.Louis Money, an employee of several 24-hour adult video stores during the time period, including Gents and I-40 Video & News, told the North Carolina investigative outlet The Assembly that Robinson was a regular customer, sometimes coming in as often as five nights a week to watch pornographic videos in a private booth.According to Money, Robinson typically watched two or more “previews” in private booths for $8 a piece during each visit. While the stores catered to both straight and gay clientele, Money says Robinson’s tastes were fairly standard for a straight man.“I know he might have problems with gay people, but I don’t think he has problems with lesbians,” said Money.Money remembers Robinson as funny, cracking jokes during his visits to Gents and performing a standup-type routine for employees and a few customers, although many of those jokes would target the store’s gay clientele.

Beetlejuice was, in essence, a slyly original movie about ghosts who are stuck in a kind of purgatory. So it’s fitting that a long-gestating sequel to the 1988 classic has been seemingly trapped in development hell as long as the titular bio-exorcist has been, well, dead.Nixed screenplays with titles like “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian” and “Beetlejuice in Love” have come and gone; the original screenwriters have passed into heaven’s waiting room; Alec Baldwin has long since aged out of playing 30-year-old hunks; and Tim Burton has spent decades teasing the possibility of a sequel while occupied with more pressing projects like, uh… Dumbo.Now, thirty-six years after Beetlejuice became a morbid hit — a gap equal to the passage of time between Citizen Kane and Star Wars — the aptly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is finally shake, shake, shaking into theaters.

letter, Coors’ company executives said its human resources team began making plans in March to broaden the view of its DEI policies to ensure all employees “know they are welcome.” The beer giant said it would halt all DEI trainings, scuttle requiring suppliers to meet diversity goals, and tie executive compensation solely to business performance rather than “aspirational representation goals.”The company also said it would stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s “Corporate Equality Index,” an annual survey that ranks companies based on the existence of their LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination policies, as well as employee benefit policies that recognize same-sex relationships, LGBTQ-headed families, or transgender identities as valid.Starbuck has primarily been targeting companies whose consumer base is perceived as socially conservative, including beer and spirit manufacturers, retail chains, automotive brands like Ford Motor Company, motorcycle giant Harley-Davidson, or agricultural-related companies like Tractor Supply Co. or John Deere.But his campaign appears to be aimed at eventually intimidating or forcing all major corporations — even those with liberal customer bases — into dropping DEI policies, which conservatives claim are a form of “reverse racism” that prioritize the hiring and advancement of people from various minority groups over allegedly more “qualified” heterosexual and cisgender white employees.