Merchant's House Museum to Present Whitman in Love This Pride Month | Playbill
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Merchant's House Museum to Present Whitman in Love This Pride Month

The piece draws from Whitman's trailblazing expressions of same-sex love.

April 10, 2026 By Margaret Hall

Walt Whitman

This Pride Month, New York City's Merchant's House Museum will present Whitman in Love, starring John Kevin Jones (A Christmas Carol; Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe).

Running June 24-28 only, the piece will be presented by the Summoners Ensemble in the Museum's garden, just blocks from where the famed journalist, essayist, and pioneering queer poet took nightly refuge at Pfaff's beer cellar. That cellar, historically located just blocks from the Merchant's House on Broadway at Bleecker Street, was a bohemian gathering place where Whitman found community, inspiration, and the human intimacy that shaped his work. 

Said Jones, “Whitman wrote of love in ways that transcended the boundaries of his time. During Pride Month, we honor him as a queer ancestor—an artist who insisted that love between men was worthy of poetry, dignity, and song.”

Whitman in Love draws from the poet’s Live Oak, with Moss sequence of poems, which are widely recognized as among the earliest expressions of same-sex love in American literature. Written in the 1850s and later camouflaged in the Calamus section of Leaves of Grass, the poems trace an emotional arc of desire, tenderness, heartbreak, and resilience. Whitman in Love places these verses in conversation with the voices and relationships that shaped Whitman’s inner life and artistic imagination.

Seating is strictly limited at 40 per performance. Wine and light beverages will be offered in the garden. In the case of rain, the performance will move indoors to the grand Greek-Revival parlor.

For more information, visit MerchantsHouse.org.

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