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Where: The Cultch Historic Theatre
Tickets and info: Starting at $29 at thecultch.com
At the end of In My Day, Rick Waines’ documentary about the history of HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, a character asks, “Is it part of the collective memory?”
One of the main goals of this work is clearly to help cement the detailed reality of Vancouver’s HIV/AIDS history into our communal memory. Although it spans only about 40 years, the history of HIV threatens to be obscured by more recent epidemics such as COVID, as well as the relative normalization of HIV by medical advances. Based on interviews with nearly 200 people, the play uses 10 actors to give voice to some Vancouverites who survived HIV and AIDS, telling their own stories and honoring those who didn’t make it.
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Together with choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Zee Zee Theater Director Shawn Macdonald has created a fluid, dance-like style for the set, which shifts seamlessly from one nameless character to another. This not only works to smooth and speed up the script’s chronological development, but also gives the play an almost celebratory quality: more commemorative than funereal.
A My Day, Rick Waines’ documentary about the history of HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, runs until December 11 at The Cultch Historic Theatre. Photo: Sarah Race. Photo by Sarah Race /jpg
The first half focuses on the fun side of the gay community and the young people who made Vancouver in the 1960s and 1970s a gay party town. Actor Scott Button expresses one: “When I was 10, dad said, ‘I bought you a soccer ball.’ I said, ‘I don’t want a foosball, I want a fondue game!’
We hear about gay clubs like The Gandy Dancer and Celebrities, widespread promiscuity, cruises and bathhouses. We learn about indigenous gay men, good turns from actors Cameron Peal and Kelsey Kanatan Wavey, and the risks of crossing over for a person of color (from actor Alen Dominguez). We are reminded how the incorporation of gay culture led to conflict with sex workers in the West End.
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“Then things started to go sideways” in the 1980s when infections of what the TV network called “the gay cancer” suddenly began to flourish. Fear, guilt and recriminations for unsafe sex. The dying, including those who took their own lives to “die gracefully” and those who nursed them. The sentence that had the strongest reaction from the public: “Gay white men need to know how much lesbians did for us. We owe them everything.”
A My Day, Rick Waines’ documentary about the history of HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, runs until December 11 at The Cultch Historic Theatre. Photo: Sarah Race. Photo by Sarah Race /jpg
The latter part of the play chronicles the community’s growing resistance against the demonization of HIV victims by the likes of then-Prime Minister Bill Vander Zalm.
We see the evolution of the Act Up movement, the development of AIDS Vancouver and Dr. Peter Center as it became clear that AIDS was not a specifically gay disease, but affected drug users, women and others. We follow the new miracle drugs and their side effects.
While not always elegant, the script does a good job of encompassing this complex and contentious story, with good work from a committed ensemble. In addition to those already mentioned, Ivy Charles, Patti Allan, Nick Miami Benz stand out for their elegant dance moves, along with Sabrina Symington and Jackson Wai Chung Tse. Special congratulations to Braiden Houle who did a great job as a last minute replacement for Allan Morgan under the weather.
The story of HIV/AIDS is not over yet. And as In My Day insists, it must not be forgotten.