Theater Review: One in Two awakens the audience to HIV in the black queer community

One in Two

Written by Donja R. Love

Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb

The New Group

Pershing Square Theaters

December 18, 2019

Donja R. Love (below) is a millennial-generation Afro-Queer (his term) playwright with credentials from Julliard, among other places. One in Two is his new autobiographically-flavored protest to the unresolving AIDS epidemic in the queer black male community. It is estimated that 1 in 2 (hence the name of the play) queer black men are HIV+, rates far higher than, say, the Latino or white community. The reasons for this are complex, including cultural factors of shame and avoidance within both the queer and black communities, as well as lack of interest from medical organizations and complete neglect by the media. Since AIDS became, for at least white patients, a manageable disease live with, rather than die from, it has largely disappeared from most public discussion. But this is because many patients have access to a variety of antiviral drugs for use both immediately after sex (prophylactic) and after infection occurs (suppressive). The drugs are often expensive, and sometimes have side effects that benefit from regular primary care followup, often lacking in young people with limited means, despite Obamacare. The author, an HIV+ man, knows all of this up close and personal, and this play is his response, mixing frustration and anger, reminding me of the gay consciousness plays of the late 70’s and the AIDS plays (e.g. The Normal Heart) from the 90s.

The play itself mixes a number of creative angles, some more successful than others. As we enter the theater we see three shirtless young black men sitting motionless on an all-white set that looks rather like a padded cell (societal metaphors). The audience is asked to take a number as we enter the theater from a dispenser like you would see at a deli counter. This “number” angle (another meaning of the play’s title) exerts itself early in the play, as the audience is asked to vote for one of the three as #1, without any context or criteria, one of the many references to queer black men being seen as numbers or statistics, rather than as individuals. I am not sure if all three of the actors are prepared to play the #1 autobiographical role, depending on the audience applause vote. The play will then tell the story of #1 ranging from childhood to HIV diagnosis to suicide. The play then moves along nicely with a series of vignettes such as telling a lover and the mother that he is HIV+ (the lover is sympathetic then abandons him, mom makes food), with political and social data and opinions offered in the overused but useful device of a talky support group with three widely differing black male HIV+ members (one is conservative and married, one is gender fluid, and the author role is just depressed), pointing out that such patents are not numbers, but individuals. There are a variety of postmodern touches like interruptions of the play for the actors to debate about how to proceed (this is real!), but blissfully no video closeups. All during the show a backdrop clicker moves relentlessly upwards, exceeding 1 million by the end, showing (?) HIV cases growing in the community, and the play ends interestingly, with the three cast members turning away from the audience and looking up at the numbers. The house lights come up, we tentatively clap, then leave with the actors on stage, as they were at the beginning—the problem has not gone away, nor have queer HIV+ black men, and maybe this wasn’t a play at all.

I liked the actors three actors. Jamyl Dobson was particularly versatile in myriad roles requiring lots of acting range. The director kept the frenetic, angst-filled dialogue well controlled and clear, and the brightly lit bleached-white set was versatile, with lots of sliding doors, platforms, etc. making many scenes possible without losing the basic all white ambiance. To the playwright’s credit, I never felt yelled at or preached to—these are hard to avoid in such plays based on personal frustration.

I think this play is a well-written and executed example of an “awareness and anger” bio-play of the type I have not seen for some years, giving it a peculiar retro-feel, not quite as obviously topically driven as are many of the black woke-ness type plays I have seen over the past few years in NYC. It was odd to see it at the New Group, which lately has favored bad musicals (Cyrano, Clueless) and star-driven vanity plays. One of the most interesting things about seeing this play in the half-empty theater was that the first six rows were filled with the mostly white, older regular season subscribers, sitting respectfully as always. In the back was an active, engaged group of black high school students, responding to the performance with verbal interjections as would happen in many black churches (“that’s right! We’re with you!) and regularly showing approval not with applause but with finger snapping, a Gen Z thing that is new to me. It was an odd form of social segregation demonstrated right there in the theater, but somehow added to my enjoyment. Since the play is apparently not selling well, I would fill those empty seats with similar young people, as they seemed to respond to the play with an excited, visceral emotion that I did not.