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Going for the laughs

Lesbian comedian plays four shows this weekend at Riot Act

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Lesbian comedian and actress Erin Foley plays Riot Act Comedy Theatre tonight and Saturday. (Photo by John Skalicky)

Even before 7 a.m., after dropping her girlfriend off at the train station, comedian Erin Foley can elicit a laugh.

“If I have a sentence that is not grammatically correct, if you could make it grammatically correct so I don’t sound like an idiot … if you could make me sound more literate, that would be fantastic,” Foley says, though the suggestion turned out to be unnecessary.

Foley has brought her act to the D.C. area and plays Riot Act Comedy Theatre (801 E St., N.W.) tonight (Friday) and Saturday at 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Foley got into comedy after moving to New York with every intention of going to graduate school to teach.

She did an improv show then stuck around to see the stand-up comics.

“I was in Manhattan and I did some improv at a New York comedy club and then right after the improv shows was all the stand up shows and I had never seen stand up before,” Foley says. “I tried it and it went OK … I could definitely see the potential … I started again and I just didn’t stop.”

Foley covers a little bit of everything in her act from politics to news and just ridiculous things. Nothing is safe.

“After you’ve been doing stand up for a while, you become trained,” she says. “I have a heightened sense of ridiculousness.”

Foley is constantly writing down things she thinks are funny, not always knowing it’ll work, but trying everything anyway.

Audiences are a major part of stand up, if they don’t think something is funny, the joke falls flat, she says. Traveling to different parts of the country is also part of the job and that could cause problems with some jokes.

“I’m a pretty liberal Democrat and I’m gay, so some of that material is not going to work all over our country … we have other things in common,” Foley says. “Coming to a city like D.C., its fantastic, because there’s no editing, I can talk about anything I want, it’s a like-minded crowd.”

She’d also like to travel to London and Australia at some point and spend some time performing over there.

Foley has also done some acting, including a role in ā€œAlmost Famousā€ and a couple short films. Acting is what made her move to Los Angeles.

“You have to be out here for a while. When you move here from Manhattan, you think, ā€˜Oh it’ll be great, it’ll be seamless,’” Foley says. “You kind of have to almost start over in a way … the last couple of years, there has been more and more opportunities.ā€

She has also done some TV pilots, commercials and was a semi-finalist on NBC’s ā€œLast Comic Standing.ā€

She definitely has some favorite shows, ranging from FOX’s “New Girl” with Zooey Deschnel to HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” some of which she would definitely like to be on, but really she just wants to work.

“I’d jump into any one of those shows that’s on air,” Foley says, laughing. “I think TV in the last five years has really taken off. I mean, there’s such amazing programs.”

Opening for Foley will be John Betz, Jr. and Will Hessler. Tickets are $20 and available online atĀ riotactcomedy.com.

“I’ve never been at Riot Act … and I’ve heard nothing but good things,” Foley says. “I’m super excited and it’s been … a couple years since I’ve been [to D.C.]”

For more information, visitĀ erinkfoley.comĀ or follow her on Twitter atĀ twitter.com/erinfoleycomic.

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Arts & Entertainment

How queer Baltimore artists are building strong community spaces

Fruit Camp is home to tattoo artists, musicians, herbalist, and more

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A tattoo artist prepares to work at Fruit Camp. (Photo by Emi Lynn Holler/courtesy Fruit Camp Studio)

Fruit Camp, a tattoo and art studio in the Remington neighborhood of Baltimore, opened with a bang in February of 2020. ā€œWe had a big opening party. It was really fun. Everybody came,ā€ says Geo Mccandlish, one of the co-founders. ā€œIt was the last rager I went to,ā€ they said. 

The pandemic shut down their shop—alongside the world—for months, but the shop survived. ā€œWe just put our stimulus checks into keeping the rent paid,ā€ says Emi Lynn Holler, the other co-founder. 

They had built the space without loans, on a low-budget, do-it-yourself ethos with hands-on help from their community. ā€œThe deeply punk shoestring budget background worked really to our advantage,ā€ says Mccandlish.

While it wasn’t ideal, it was fitting. Mccandlish and Holler’s artistic partnership has almost always lived at the crossroads of community, DIY, and extraordinary circumstances. A decade ago they met as residents of the Bell Foundry, an arts co-op and co-living space, where sharing knowledge, making community, and living cheaply were key to getting by.

It was there that Holler gifted Mccandlish their first tattooing machine and taught them how to use it. And it was where the two of them—who also do printmaking, fiber arts, and other creative activities—started imagining co-founding a space of their own. That dream felt more urgent in 2016 when Baltimore condemned the Bell Foundry and evicted the residents, including Mccandlish, during a nationwide crackdown on artist co-ops after the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland.

Holler had by then moved to Massachusetts to pursue formal tattoo education and certifications. 

ā€œLiving inside that level of precarity,ā€ Mccandlish explains, ā€œmade us want to figure out a hybrid,ā€ between the unique, collaborative Bell Foundry and a licensed, commercial space. ā€œWe wanted to find a way to create more safety,ā€ says Holler.

But they didn’t just want to create safety for the two of them. When looking at spaces, they opted to lease a bigger studio—a two-story, double-row house with room for tattooing on the first floor and small studios on the second. Mccandlish said the prospect of a larger project felt ā€œtantalizing and preciousā€ because they felt ā€œif you have access to something, you try to make sure that every resource that is a part of it is also shared.ā€

Today, in addition to tattoos, Fruit Camp holds studios for musicians, fiber artists, an herbalist, a massage therapist, and a doula. ā€œWe’re able to incubate and hold nontraditional pathways to different kinds of creative practices,ā€ says Mccandlish.

You can consider Fruit Camp a queer business by several definitions. For one, every member of the studio identifies as queer, in some way. It also looks queer. ā€œIt’s campy and it’s pink, and we have a lot of gay art hanging around,ā€ explains Mccandlish. 

Holler says sometimes they get asked about losing potential patrons by being openly queer, but that isn’t a worry. ā€œI think it only strengthens us,ā€ they say. ā€œIt brings people to us who also want to find each other in that world.ā€ They pause, ā€œI feel like it boils down to we keep us safe and we take care of ourselves.ā€

Mccandlish emphasizes that ā€œqueer is the political meaningā€ and the ā€œorientation toā€ which they do their work as a community space and business. Their shop practices are explicitly queer and trans-friendly—in addition to being ā€œanti-racist, anti-sexist, liberation-oriented, and accessible.ā€ For example, the shop requires masking and has consent-forward and trauma-informed practices in place. They also use cost-sharing instead of a traditional profit model with those who work in their space. ā€œThe point is not to make as much money as everybody can, the point is to work enough with a low enough cost overhead that everyone can survive without overworking.ā€

That is a continued goal, not a static place, they explain. ā€œSome of our goals, we haven’t reached yet, like turning into a true worker co-op.ā€

But they are already making big strides in the community. For example, some patrons tell them that they are the only tattoo studio they feel safe using, due to the universal masking policies. To their knowledge, they are the only shop in Baltimore that has the policy.

Fruit Camp also has a big community name. One day Mccandlish logged onto a community Facebook group and saw an anonymous post asking about queer-friendly tattooers or tattooers who would tattoo someone who has HIV. The post said, ā€œI’ve been turned away from five different shops.ā€

Immediately Mccandlish went to the comments to write that Fruit Camp would be happy to tattoo them, but instead, they found the comment section full of that recommendation already. It warmed their heart. ā€œThat feels like a very minor way that [our work] is so important.ā€

(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)

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Theater

Timely comedy ā€˜Fake It’ focuses on Native American themes

Arena Stage production features two out actors

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Eric Stanton Betts (standing) and Brandon Delsid in ā€˜Fake It Until You Make It.’ (Photo by Daniel Rader)

ā€˜Fake It Until You Make It’
Through May 4
Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $59
Arenastage.org

A farce requires teamwork. And Larissa FastHorse’s ā€œFake It Until You Make Itā€ now at Arena Stage is no exception.Ā 

The timely comedy focuses on Native American nonprofits fractiously housed in a shared space. Friction rises when rivals River (Amy Brenneman), a white woman operating in the Indigenous world, goes up against the more authentic Wynona (Shyla Lefner) to win a lucrative Native-funded grant.   

While Brenneman (best known for TV’s Judging Amy) is undeniably a big draw, it takes a group collaboration to hit marks, land jokes, and pull off the well-executed physical comedy including all those carefully timed door slams.

As members of the six-person ā€œFake Itā€ cast, Brandon Delsid and Eric Stanton Betts, both out actors of partly indigenous ancestry, contribute to the mayhem. Respectively, Delsid and Betts play Krys and Mark, a pair of two-spirited Native Americans who meet farcically cute and enjoy one of the play’s more satisfying arcs. 

For Krys, every attractive man is a potential next fling, but when Mark, handsome and relatively reserved, arrives on the scene, it’s something entirely different. 

Both onstage and sometimes off, Betts plays the straight man to Delsid’s waggishness. But when it comes down to real life business, the friends are on the same page: not only are the L.A.-based, up-and-coming actors intensely serious about their film and stage careers, but they’re also particularly engaged in the themes of Indigenous People found in ā€œFake It.ā€ 

On a recent Wednesday following a matinee and an audience talkback, they were ready for a phone interview. 

In establishing whose voice was whose, Delsid clarified with ā€œI’m the one who sounds a little like a Valley girl.ā€ 

WASHINGTON BLADE: Brandon, you’ve been with the show since its early work-shopping days in 2022 and through its debut in Los Angeles and now Washington. Have things evolved? 

BRANDON DELSID: Definitely. I’ve grown up in the last couple of years and so has my character; it’s hard to know where I end and Kry begins. There’s been a real melding.

Eric and I are both queer, and to get to play these roles that are so human, imperfect, sexy, and interesting is really joyful.

As queer artists you don’t always get the chance to do work like this. So many stories are queer trauma, which is incredibly important, but it’s liberating to feel joy and ride it off into the sunset, which, without revealing too much, is kind of what we get to do.

BLADE: There’s some race shifting in ā€œFake Itā€ particularly with regard to ā€œpretendianā€ (a pejorative term describing a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous status). 

ERIC STANTON BETTS:  The last few years I’ve been on a journey with my cultural identity and place in the world. I’m a mixed BIPOC artist, my dad is Black and Native American by way of the Cherokee tribe and my mom is white. 

Since 2020, I’ve tried to figure out where I belong in this cultural history that I haven’t had a tie to throughout my life; it’s gratifying to find my way back to my indigeneity and be welcomed. 

In the play, race shifting is introduced through farce. But it’s never in a disrespectful way; it’s never mocked or done in a way to take away from others. The playwright parallels race shifting with gender fluidity. 

DELSID: But in life, there are people posing as Indigenous, actively taking grants, and the play goes there, we don’t hold back. Larissa, our playwright, has made it clear that she’s not trying to figure it out for us. With that in mind, we hope people leave the theater interested and curious to learn more. 

BLADE: Mark arrives kind of the middle of some crazy drama, bringing along a jolt of romance. 

BETTS:  Yeah, when I show up, we’re all sort of shot out of a cannon, struggling to keep up with the initial lie. 

DESLID: A very gay cannon. 

BLADE: What’s up next for you two?

BETTS: Both Brandon and I are up for the same part in a TV pilot, so one of us may be getting some very good news. I also have a Tyler Perry film coming out soon [he plays a model, not an unfamiliar gig for Betts]. 

DELSID: Coming up, I have a recurring part on HBO’s ā€œThe Rehearsal,ā€ and a supporting part in ā€œJune and John,ā€ a John Besson film. But doing ā€œFake It Until You Make Itā€ in L.A. and now D.C. has been a special time in our lives. It’s 23/7 togetherness. There’s that hour for sleep. 

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Out & About

Taste of Point returns May 7

Annual reception honors LGBTQ student scholars

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A scene from last year’s Taste of Point reception. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Point Foundation will host its annual ā€œTaste of Point Receptionā€ on Wednesday, May 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Room & Board.Ā 

The popular event will take place on the top floor and outdoor terrace at Room & Board, featuring small plates from area restaurants, hand-crafted cocktails from local mixologists, and a speaking portion where guests will hear directly from Point Foundation scholars. This year, Point is supporting a record-breaking class of 755 scholars and guests’ support will allow Point to continue its mission. Point Foundation is the nation’s largest scholarship-granting organization for LGBTQ students of merit. 

Tickets are tax deductible and can be purchased at Point’s website.Ā 

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