Karis Rogerson

Articles written for Newsbreak

A short story published by The Heartbeat newsletter in Nov. 2022

She was singing before she even reached the stage, the sparkles on her red dress catching the light as she shimmied, the audience captivated and delighted by her rendition of "Come Together."
The song, rousing and upbeat, was the perfect choice to kick off Carole J. Bufford's show at Feinstein's/54 Below, a one-night celebration of the release of her second album, also titled "Come Together," which, itself, is a combination of the favorite songs from her latest two shows.
Bufford is a natural...

1 Interview: Amy Maude Helfer of THE SORCERER & TRIAL BY JURY at Kaye Playhouse
4 Sarah Anne Fernandez Brings Down the House at Chelsea Table and Stage
It was a great year. It was a fast year, that's for sure. Still, here we are, just 21 days away from 2020 and in the upcoming days, many will be looking at life in both directions. What will the new year bring, what was memorable about the last year, how did we spend it, how will we change it, what is this thing called life? Are we on the righ...

In a dark, mauve-curtained room, on the fourth floor of a hotel, around 7:15 p.m. on August 26th, the lights began to dim, and a scattered audience of socially distanced cabaret goers erupted into cheers and applause as Ellen Marlow bounded onto the stage. Marlow was at The Green Room 42 performing "Silver Linings", a show that recapped the emotionally tumultuous past year and a half since Covid-19 shut down Broadway (and her production of "Frozen"). Coincidentally, it was also my first show ...

Stacey Kent's voice is delicate, refined; one might even venture to say she's posh. Her singing is transportive, taking audiences by the hand and flying with us into the past, until we blink and it's almost as if we're in a jazz club sometime last century. The upstairs room at Birdland Jazz Club was lit by candlelight, and the flickering flames lent themselves to the dream Kent weaves, assisted by pianist Art Hirahara and flautist/saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, in "Songs From Other Places." The s...

The queer political activist and punk rocker Maria V. Alyokhina executed a daring escape from Russia recently. Alyokhina is a member of Pussy Riot, a protest and performance art group that first made waves in 2012 for staging an anti-Putin protest in a church.
Alyokhina has been fighting for Russia to respect its own constitution for over a decade now and has been imprisoned more than once. Her escape involved slipping into Belarus dressed as a food courier, then making multiple attempts to c...

Students and faculty at a New Jersey school rallied to show their LGBTQ pride after a school board policy prevented them from hoisting a rainbow Pride flag on the flagpole in front of the school.
After students at Passaic Preparatory Academy raised the flag last June for Pride Month, the Board of Education said it realized there was no policy covering which flags could be flown in front of schools. They worked to implement a policy that only allows for an American flag, a New Jersey state fla...

A gay music teacher in Iowa was forced to resign from his high school after a blackmailer threatened him.
Matthew Gerhold began working at Valley Lutheran High School in Cedar Valley, Iowa last year. Although he told school officials that he was gay before he was hired, they later compelled him to resign or face termination after he was blackmailed.
Related: This GOP congressional candidate is so extreme her daughter is begging people not to vote for her
Gerhold’s phone was hacked in January ...

The hardest thing is being proud.
Growing up I was told pride was a sin. One of the seven deadly sins, apparently the one from which all other sins arise. I was also told that homosexuality was a sin. Actually, they told me it was worse than a sin, and I refuse to spell out the word they used to describe it because I find it hateful, judgmental, and utterly cruel. But they told me it was bad.
Related: How to get smarter & fight harder for LGBTQ rights
Growing up I couldn’t fathom being proud ...