THEATER’S ‘ONE IN TWO’ LOOKS AT HIV CRISIS
Just as the COVID pandemic will no doubt inspire playwrights in future years, the AIDS epidemic has been a major inspiration for many plays produced over the past 35 years at Diversionary Theatre, the thirdoldest LGBTQ theater in America.
But there’s one story about the HIV/AIDS epidemic that hasn’t been told at the University Heights theater until now. Donja R. Love’s “One in Two,” which opened Diversionary’s 202122 season on Saturday, is named for the shocking statistic that one in two gay or bisexual Black men in America will be diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in their lifetime. That compares to one in four among Latino gay and bisexual men and one in 11 gay or bisexual White men, according to 2018 figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Love himself identifies as an HIV-positive, Afro-queer man, and the central character in his 80-minute play is his alter-ego, an HIV-positive gay Black male playwright who’s planning to write a script about his experience. That self-referential
nod is just one of many fascinating aspects of this funny, interesting and unusual play.
Reminiscent of JeanPaul Sartre’s existential drama “No Exit,” about three characters trapped for eternity in a purgatorial waiting room, “One in Two” also takes place in a sterile white-walled waiting room designed by Victoria Petrovich. Three Black gay men take a number and wait their turn to re-enact for the audience their life-anddeath battle with HIV/ AIDS. On the wall, a digital clock ticks constantly upward, no doubt registering the escalating diagnoses
among this population (in 2018, there were 9,712 new diagnoses in this community, or 26 percent of the national total).
But on this day, one of these three nameless men decides to break the routine. In true Brechtian fashion, he breaks the fourth wall to ask the audience by a show of applause to decide who will go first in telling their story, which the other two men will support by playing different characters in the first man’s life. On opening night, it was actor Carter Piggee who was chosen to play the central role.
Piggee and his co-stars, Durwood Murray and Kevane
La’Marr Coleman, are trained to play all three characters, so audiences could see a different show every night, depending on their applause. The randomness of who will be chosen is a good representation of the toss-of-the-dice danger the virus represents to this community. All three men are so good in the roles they played on opening night, it’s hard to imagine any better fit.
The play is best suited for an adult audience, with raw language, talk about suicide and a scene of sexuality and simulated nudity.