I flew in under the wire to catch 5th Wall Theatre’s final performance of Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City at Richmond Triangle Players' impressive stage in Scott’s Addition. This play is a curious hybrid, a bifurcated cryptid if you will, as its first and second acts...
Richmond drag performer Sweet Pickles describes herself as a "dancing troll with an AC Moore rewards card." Claire Gates has a busy theater career. But whenever she finds time, she paints her face, dons a wig made from yarn, and becomes Sweet Pickles, a rising star in Richmond’s ever-growing drag scene. “The way I like to describe myself is like...
In Critiques For The Culture's latest contribution to GayRVA, Taneasha White and Brooke Taylor examine TheatreLAB's An Octoroon, and ask: Did this play about racial relations in the 19th century -- and today -- achieve its intended goal? Critiques for The Culture is a conversational podcast and radio show (on WRIR and WRWK) that focuses on...
Why is a public school being housed in a building owned by a church, and how can it be required to not do anything that would violate "Catholic moral values, ethics and faith"? A New Jersey taxpayer-funded public charter school run by a private non-profit organization has the Catholic Church for its landlord. Last week administrators at the...
The attacks from this administration just do not stop. On Friday, Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that seems calculated to have devastating effects on LGBTQ health care in the United States. Roger Severino, who is the director of HHS's Office of Civil Rights -- and, probably not coincidentally, a known...
RPS and Side By Side worked together in order to make school a more inclusive place for Richmond's LGBTQ students. At last Monday's meeting of the School Board for Richmond Public Schools, the school district presented the first draft of a revision to the school system's Student Code of Responsible Ethics (SCORE). And one of the most important...
This callous move affects a population significantly more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. On Wednesday, Trump's Department of Housing And Urban Development (HUD) released a proposal for a revised rule that would pave the way for homeless shelters to refuse accomodation to homeless people on the basis of gender...
Virginia's National Guard not only said they'd enforce the trans military ban in the Commonwealth, but also backed the deceptive anti-LGBTQ reasoning for the ban given by the Trump administration. On Tuesday, Major General Timothy P. Williams, the Adjutant General of Virginia's National Guard, told ThinkProgress that the Virginia National Guard...
This "religious freedom" bill is the latest in a long string of bills intended to protect companies who support anti-LGBTQ discrimination. A couple of weeks ago, word had it that the bill working its way through the Texas legislature, known as the "Save Chick-Fil-A" bill, was all but dead. However, this week has shown that there's still life in...
Utah Republican Mike Lee previously authored the First Amendment Defense Act, which attempted to legalize many forms of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. A U.S. Senator is speaking out in opposition after the House of Representatives passed the historic Equality Act Friday afternoon. The legislation expands existing civil rights laws to protect LGBTQ...
