As WorldPride 2025 came to a close, it’s safe to say that the art and artists marking the events of the past two weeks were just as varied, beautiful, and spectacularly unique as the queerness such art hoped to embody and embolden. From powerful concerts to smaller, more intimate songs sung in venues that emblematize the gloriousness that is America, to staged readings and plays that brought to life the struggle faced by members of the LGBTQ+ community throughout history, WorldPride 2025 certainly had its unforgettable moments. 

…varied, beautiful, and spectacularly unique…unforgettable moments.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre’s “Pride Plays”
Woolly Mammoth Theatre contributed to the festivities by staging a series of Pride Play readings. Featuring the voices of new playwrights and one very iconic one, the series delivered riveting looks at far-ranging LGBTQ-centered issues. I attended the reading of “The Normal Heart.” The iconic Larry Kramer-penned piece is largely autobiographical inasmuch as the play follows a group of men who must watch in devastation as one by one their friends, lovers, and family members succumb to AIDS. Kramer, founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and then later ACT UP, insightfully portrays the heartbreak, frustration, escalating tension amid and beyond the group, and fear. It is largely the fear that what is happening is virtually unstoppable, that AIDS is a “gay men’s cancer” unworthy of its country’s help, and that not enough will pay attention until too many have been infected. The tremendous cast, under the direction of Zhailon Levingston, demonstrated that a staged reading done right could powerfully convey the intense emotionality of Kramer’s seminal play, even with book in hand. Most notably, Robin de Jesús in the lead role of Ned Weeks authentically became the voice of a generation of men decimated and forever haunted by the ravages of a disease and the responding cruelty of their country. While Katy Sullivan’s Dr. Emma Brookner brilliantly embodied the no-nonsense conscience of a nation that otherwise refused to hear that voice.

Woolly Mammoth Theatre’s “Pride Plays” ran from June 3 – 6, 2025. For more information about the plays presented, please go online. 

Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC (GMCW)
Throughout WorldPride, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC has shouldered the herculean task of being seemingly everywhere all at once—quite literally. Their smaller ensembles have popped up throughout the DC area along with choirs and choruses from around the country. I was able to catch a few of the performances and, each and every time, was struck not solely by the amazing vocal talents and inspirational song choices, but also by the audiences. In The Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Rock Creek Singers filled the otherwise vast, glass-ceilinged space with dulcet tones of hope, love, and the overwhelming affirmation that our differences are what make us exceptional. An eventually teary-eyed couple sitting near me asked where else they might be able to catch this choral group, as this was their first encounter with any variation of the GMCW. (Note: When attending certain events bedecked in rainbow during Pride, you’re going to get asked a lot of logistical questions.) Happily, I did my best to answer. Another woman observed, “just look at all of the people here—every one of them, so…hopeful.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The GMCW, in tandem with the International Pride Orchestra, capped off two weeks of smaller shows and pop-up events with a loud, large and utterly joy-filled concert. Initially scheduled for the Kennedy Center, the show was spectacularly staged at the Music Center at Strathmore. Hosted by the incomparable and truly larger-than-life, Peaches Christ, and featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race favorite, Thorgy Thor, the event showcased incredible vocal and instrumental talent from across the country. The orchestra spotlighted pieces from queer composers, featuring queer artists. Perhaps my favorite was Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Pianist extraordinaire, Sara Davis Buechner, proved that piano playing, at least a truly virtuoso performance, requires every bit of one’s heart, body, and soul. She threw herself into that piece, and the result took the audience’s collective breath away. Among the more sentimental and tear-jerking numbers was “I Love You More,” a piece by Ann Hampton Callaway commissioned in honor of Tyler Clementi, a young man who took his own life after being cyber-bullied because of his sexuality. We all held our breath for a moment. Conductor Robert Moody closed the show leading both the orchestra and GMCW in a rendition of “America the Beautiful.” Moody explained that in deciding how to end the concert, a number of song choices were floated about. Ultimately, however, they agreed, “America the Beautiful” just seemed to say it all. With a bevy of flags, American and otherwise, waved by drag queens standing proudly in the spotlight, the closing number indeed said it all.

For more information about the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, please go online. 

There is a poem I recently came across that, for me, powerfully sums up what so much of Pride Month embodies. In the last few lines of Victoria Redel’s “Bedecked,” she reflects on her queer son’s journey:

Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son
who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means –
this way or that – but for the way facets set off prisms and
prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows – made every
shining true color.
Now try to tell me – man or woman – your heart was ever once
that brave.

These past two weeks in our nation’s capital have been about brave hearts and shining true colors, and that, my friends, is Pride.