Anytime the Savoy Theater in Montpelier shows the Rocky Horror Picture Show, they’re cleaning up the theater for weeks, according to the theater’s marketing director, Leah Fishman.
The cult classic features audience participation moments, including $5 prop bags full of messy objects like handfuls of uncooked rice. But Fishman said the cleanup was well worth the trouble.
“It takes weeks, but we never regret it. It’s always so fun,” she said.
Rocky Horror is one of six cinematic events planned for the theater’s Queer Film Festival, a three-week-long celebration of LGBTQ+ films and shorts, both modern and classic. The festival, now in its fourth year, is one of Vermont’s many events celebrating Pride Month this June.
Pride Month events stretch all the way from Springfield to Newport, along with Bethel, Rutland, Morrisville, Barre and Essex, according to the Pride Center of Vermont. It kicks off two days early with Montpelier Pride on Friday, which includes a parade, music on the Statehouse lawn and street art.
Just don’t look for Burlington on the list of June events: Vermont’s largest city has its annual Pride event scheduled for September, according to the Pride Center.
Along with town-sponsored events, local venues have planned a wide variety of Pride-themed entertainment. Barre LGBTQ+ bar Foxy’s has an amateur drag night slated for June 7, while Babes Bar in Bethel has Gay Trivia planned on June 26 with the motto “Anyone can play but it’s gonna be gay.”
One of Savoy’s screenings has a Babes Bar tie-in: “One Night at Babes,” the first of its Queer Shorts events, depicts the bar’s connections to the LGBTQ+ community and its rural neighbors, Fishman said.
Another film at the festival, the surreal trans allegory “I Saw the TV Glow,” had its Vermont premiere at the Green Mountain Film Festival in 2024, but the Savoy never had the chance to screen it.
“We’ve had it sort of in our back pocket for a while, hoping for a chance and sort of saving it for Pride,” Fishman said.
Fishman said the film festival was inspired by the love of “queer cinema” among Savoy staff members, some of whom are LGBTQ+ themselves.
“We’re looking for a way to sort of share and bring new people and new voices into the theater,” she said. “Whether that be through highlighting new filmmakers or sharing stories that they love, that perhaps the community hasn’t seen yet, or engaging folks in the community in a new way and really celebrating queer voices.”
Kell Arbor, health and wellness director for the Pride Center, helped select the films this year and chose ones that would bring out a mix of “the youths and the elders.” A portion of ticket sales will go to the Pride Center as well.
Along with helping to organize Montpelier’s pride events, Arbor plans to be “DJ Kell” at a pride-themed silent disco just over the border in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on June 16.
Arbor, whose pronouns are fae/faer, said the Pride Month festivities were even more essential this year as the Trump administration rolled back federal funding for HIV prevention and other LGBTQ+ health care in Vermont.
“It’s hard to come in joy and pleasure when we’re living in such trauma, pain and grief — and, we need it more than ever, and the brighter we’re beaconing, the more it’s helping other people feel like they’re not alone,” fae said.
