The AIDS Plays Project

An anthology showcasing eight plays by lesser-known but pioneering queer writers who died from HIV/AIDS-related illnesses, interwoven with oral histories by those who knew them and responses from a generation of writers who have come of age in the wake of the epidemic.

This collection brings together scripts, essays, biographies, interviews and photographs to celebrate seven queer playwrights lost to HIV/AIDS: Charles Ludlam, James Kirkwood Jr., George Whitmore, Harry Kondoleon, Alan Bowne, Colm Ó Clúbhán and Robert Chesley.

From a drag-infused riff on La Traviata in nineteenth-century Paris to a subversive comedy about a bisexual ghost haunting rural Massachusetts, a San Francisco-set tragedy about phone sex, and a tense exploration of Irish politics in a London pub: these plays reveal the dazzling breadth of queer theatre in the US and UK during the 1970s and 80s.

They are the work of seven playwrights — some celebrated in their own time, others working on the margins of theatre — who blazed a trail on and offstage: introducing some of the first bisexual characters on Broadway, performing in drag on the streets of South London, or promoting sex positivity during the epidemic’s darkest days.

Edited and introduced by Alastair Curtis, who directed each of these plays as part of The AIDS Plays Project in London, this book brings their plays into print — in some cases for the first time. They are accompanied by photographs of each playwright, interviews with those who knew and worked with them, and new essays by leading contemporary queer playwrights reflecting on their enduring legacy.

It is a memorial to a lost generation of queer writers who have all but vanished from the modern stage — and an invitation to a new generation to rediscover and reinterpret their work.