23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A poetic meditation on love from the Oscar-winning writer of ‘Moonlight'
How do you embrace joy after a lifetime of adversity? The simple answer — try not to overthink it — is impossible for the narrator of 'We Are Gathered,' Tarell Alvin McCraney's expansive meditation on intimacy, chosen family and the possibilities of queer desire.
Wallace (Kyle Beltran) invites audiences of the play's world premiere at Arena Stage to lean in and help him through a personal crisis: He's crazy in love but uncertain about tying the knot. That's partly due to how Dubs (as he's nicknamed) met his beloved Free (Nic Ashe), cruising for sex in a public park. What kind of fairy tale is that? he wonders. He engages in arguments common among readers of queer theory, about whether marriage equality counts as liberation or whether we ought to seize the right to flout conventions.
