Abstract
In my close reading of Dan Fishback’s solo play thirtynothing (2011) I explore how presenting in performance, revolutionary moments and figures from US AIDS history, might be revelatory and inspiring for young gay people. Within the context of the ‘invisibility’ of AIDS and a gay generation gap, inviting spectators to reflect on their awareness of AIDS history, and to place themselves within a gay lineage, has political uses. This invitation is made possible by the Bakhtinian centrifugal tendencies (allegory, metaphor, remembrances and juxtapositions) within thirtynothing that draw spectators in and invite them to place their own lives amidst the action on stage. In so doing, performer and spectators jointly elucidate how the effects of AIDS continue beyond the performance space today.
In the chapter title, I’ve pluralised ‘boys’ in the quote taken from Dan Fishback’s solo play thirtynothing (2011).
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Notes
- 1.
The author thanks Dan Fishback for speaking with him about thirtynothing and graciously permitting him to quote from the script here.
- 2.
Fishback was born four months after the first mainstream US news reports in July 1981 that documented the effects of what is now called HIV (Altman 1981: A20).
- 3.
Writer and activist Sarah Schulman’s auto-ethnography (2012) makes a similar, but broader argument, as she claims the massive AIDS deaths in New York City during the plague years accelerated its gentrification . Schulman also describes the postplague years as a time of cultural and spiritual gentrification for gay and lesbian people. Like Fishback , her hope is that gay men and lesbians will soon imagine and begin practicing another way of life.
- 4.
Admittedly, white gay US artists represent a small number of the people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses in the USA and globally. Since Fishback began researching thirtynothing to find gay role models he could identify with, the whiteness of the archive he presents makes sense. Nevertheless, presenting such a narrow archive can unintentionally obscure the impact of AIDS on other populations.
- 5.
Adam Pinti’s The VOID is inspired by the early 1990s AIDS-related death of his bisexual father. The same event happens to VOID protagonist, Victor Void, who discovers an AIDS cure in an unspecified future, but dies on-stage at a celebratory gala before announcing the antidote. During the play’s action we see Victor’s celebratory mood turn as he suffers an on-stage emotional breakdown recounting how AIDS defined his life. HIV and AIDS also affected writer and performer Dan Horrigan who recounts in The Big A his experiences of living with HIV after a 2006 diagnosis. The VOID premiered 2 April 2011 at Soul Invictus as part of the 2011 Phoenix Fringe Festival in Phoenix Arizona whereas The Big A was presented in the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival and opened 13 August 2011 at The Studio at Cherry Lane.
- 6.
For instance, Broadway and off-Broadway theatres marked thirty years of HIV in 2011 with celebrated revivals of iconic AIDS plays like Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America . The following year, filmmakers marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the New York chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) with the retrospective documentaries How to Survive a Plague (dir.: David France , 2012) and United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (dir.: Jim Hubbard , 2012).
- 7.
For more on the history of ACT UP New York, see chapter 1 in Morrison (2007).
- 8.
- 9.
For example, Communication scholar Ragan Fox reports how some older gay men use the slang term ‘chicken’ to describe naïve and sexually inexperienced young men. Fox bristles at the message such a term conveys: ‘In its most basic sense, chicken is meat that is raised for consumption. The word is paradoxically and covertly connected to the marginalisation of gay men and the socially constructed myth that older homosexuals eat “chicken”, the word used to connote younger men’ (Fox 2007: 46).
- 10.
Straight culture certainly fears ageing too, but straights can readily recall cultural representations of straight characters and even family members who prosperously age. Conversely, a dearth of older gay male cultural representations exists, which can amplify the effects of heteronormative tragedy representations, particularly for gay youth without ties to older gay men.
- 11.
See Morrison (2015) for a review of the 2014 iteration of Squirts.
- 12.
Seven months after thirtynothing’s premiere, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the antiretroviral known as PrEP and marketed as Truvada (Perrone 2012). This gave HIV-negative people a new way to reduce transmission anxiety if willing and able to consume this single tablet daily.
- 13.
To educate younger spectators about this history and spur discussions about the effects of AIDS today, Fishback subsequently toured his show throughout the USA, primarily at universities. For example, I invited and raised funds for Fishback to perform thirtynothing at Arizona State University in April 2013.
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Morrison, J.A. (2018). Finding ‘Creative Rebellious Gay Boys’ in the US AIDS Archive and Repertoire with the Aid of Bakhtinian Centrifugal Tendencies. In: Campbell, A., Gindt, D. (eds) Viral Dramaturgies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70317-6_8
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