Fall 2019
A Collaborative Course
In the fall of 2019, our students in the class “HIV in Richmond: A Documentary Theater Project” worked closely with members of Nia Community Development Corporation of Greater Richmond. We wanted to learn more about Nia’s HIV education and outreach work serving Black communities, in order to better understand the epidemic and to learn how to be HIV advocates. Under the direction of theater artist José Joaquin Garcia, we wove together oral histories, statistics, images, and ritual to tell the stories of people living with HIV/AIDS today.
Project Details
“Why am I still alive? The answer was to tell this story.”
01
Class
This semester, our class moved from the history of the epidemic in Richmond to a focus on people living with HIV in Richmond today. While the earlier epidemic had primarily affected white, gay men, many of them middle class, today Black communities are the most hard-hit with HIV. Our students were shocked to learn that, although every American has a one in 99 chance of contracting HIV over the course of a lifetime, for Black men who have sex with men, the risk is one in two. Less often discussed is the impact of HIV on Black women—especially senior citizens.
Kidest Gebre and Yolanda Rawlings making cascading books.
Program from the 2019 performance.
02
Collaboration
Our collaboration with Nia this semester was both intensive and extensive. Group leaders Lindsay Bryant, Dr. Eric King, and Willnette Cunningham led an HIV-advocacy workshop for our students. Throughout the semester our students read group members’ oral histories and met with them to learn about their experiences as people living with HIV. Together they created cascading books, rehearsed and performed a docudrama, and finally broke bread. For many of our students, the experience broadened their definition of activism.
03
Cascading Book
Workshop
Under the guidance of book artist Jen Thomas, our students collaborated with group members to create a series of cascading books about the impact of HIV on their lives and legacies. The books, made from panels of bright paper, echoed the structure of the AIDS quilt.
Nia members arrived with photographs, poems, flowers and drawings. One woman brought an article about her graduation from drug court. For another member, a granddaughter’s drawing reminded her to be positively focused on staying healthy. Throughout the bookmaking workshops, our students learned more about the journeys the Nia group members had taken before and since their diagnoses.
Workshop photography by Michael Simon
Cascading book photography by Meg Hughes
From left to right: Deirdre Johnson, Willnette Cunningham, Yolanda Rawlings, and Laura Henderson. Photography by Michael Simon.
Performance
Community Conversation
Click to play the videos above.
04
Docudrama
Given our collaboration this semester, it was especially important that our docudrama have an intimate and relational tone.
Our student Kidest Gebre’s mother had transformed their home in Ethiopia into a safe house for pregnant women with HIV who had been ostracized from their communities. This inspired us to structure our play around the coffee ceremony that brings together Ethiopian communities each day. We invited audience members to join us in the coffee ceremony, thus creating a sense of solidarity with performers who were also living with HIV/AIDS.
Students performed the drama with Nia group members, who shared their stories. The drama culminated with HIV advocate Deirdre Johnson reenacting the joyous dance she posts on Facebook each night to remind others living with HIV to take their medications.
The afternoon ended with a community conversation among audience members and performers.
