NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER IN ASSOCIATION WITH TOM KIRDAHY PRODUCTIONS JAN 19–FEB 25, 2018 2017-2018 Season CONNECT NCTCSF @NCTCSF NCTCSF NCTCSF 415.861.8972 [email protected] nctcsf.org 2 NCTC 2017-2018 SEASON NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER In Association with TOM KIRDAHY PRODUCTIONS NORMAN ABRAMSON & DAVID BEERY / Season Producers LOWELL KIMBLE / Season Producer JIM TAUL & DAVE HOPMANN / Executive Producers DR. ALLAN GOLD & MR. ALAN FERRARA / Producers By Tim Pinckney Directed by Dennis Lickteig CAST KEVIN Scott Cox BYRON J. Conrad Frank MARCUS William Giammona SUSAN Desiree Rogers CHRISTOPHER Matt Weimer CREATIVE TEAM CASTING Stephanie Desnoyers COSTUME DESIGN Jorge R. Hernandez SOUND DESIGN Theodore JH Hulsker SET DESIGN AND Devin Kasper TECHNICAL DIRECTOR LIGHTING DESIGN Maxx Kurzunski STAGE MANAGEMENT Emilio Racinez PROP DESIGN Daniel Yelen STILL AT RISK WILL HAVE ONE 15-MINUTE INTERMISSION 17-18 Season Restaurant Sponsor The video and/or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited. Tema Lois by Photo The best traditional Brazilian Food in San Francisco is just three minutes away. BRUNCH - Sunday 11:30am to 4:00Pm LUNCH - Monday to Wednesday 11:30am to 2:00Pm - Thursday and Friday 11:30am to 2:30Pm DINNER - Monday 5:30 to 9:30PM - Tuesday to Thursday 5:00Pm to 10:00pm Friday and Saturday 5:00Pm to 11:00Pm Authentic, beautifully presented, and delicious Brazilian food. Our signature caipirinhas and specialty cocktails are perfect every time. Join us for lunch, happy hour or dinner before the show. We are located just around the corner. 41 Franklin Street • San Francisco 415.626.8727 www.minasbrazilianrestaurant.com Theatre a 15% discount on food items to NCTC Members. WELCOME from the Founder & Artistic Director Several decades have passed since the height of the AIDS pandemic. Like countless others, my heart still aches from the heavy toll. There is no forgetting that we were in the fight of our lives – a battle many did not survive. Still at Risk, a world premiere by Tim Pinckney, is a play about friendship and the power of standing strong together even when the odds are stacked against you. You rely on instinct learning quickly that wit, activism, dexterity, and love of one another are your most durable weapons. If you can hold on to these you might find light at the end of the longest, darkest tunnel you have ever traveled. Thankfully, we live in a different time. While rooted in history, the characters in Still at Risk live and breathe in our contemporary world. The poignant and often humorous story reminds us that we hold the responsibility to take good care of each other, advance mindfully, speak our truths and that we must always rise against injustice. I am grateful to producer Tom Kirdahy and his husband Terrence McNally for nurturing this important play forward. Their confidence in NCTC’s ability to bring this world premiere to the stage in San Francisco continues to affirm our commitment to new work. Additionally, having the pleasure of working with Tim Pinckney again, whose play Message to Michael was staged here in our 1999-2000 Season, has been a joyous homecoming. As we find ourselves with a President who abolishes his HIV Advisory Council, establishes word-bans, and continues to roll-back protections against the LGBT community, the startling reality is that we are indeed Still at Risk. Founder & Artistic Director ONSTAGE INSIGHTS January 24th, 25th, 26th at 8pm STILL AT RISK playwright, cast and director discuss the play with the audience post-show February 5th at 2pm STILL AT RISK cast and director take the stage after the show to discuss the play with the audience 2017-2018 SEASON NCTC 5 Cast of STILL AT RISK DRAMATURGYDRAMATURGYGALA Photo by Lois Tema AIDS Activism: Then and Now By Ari Rice Still at Risk, by Tim Pinckney, The contemporary landscape of opens up a discussion about how the AIDS activism, while markedly different work of AIDS organizations has shifted, from that of the 1980s and 1990s, still and whether that may be a shift which demands attention and support. The failsBY to acknowledgeKATE JONES the painful BUTLER history continued stigma of AIDS as the “gay of the disease and its activist voices. disease”, which roots in the disease’s When the AIDS epidemic began, activism initial misnomer as GRIDS (Gay-Related had to be ferocious. President Reagan’s, Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome), and the and President Bush Sr.’s, responses were discrimination that the LGBTQ community meager at best and to be diagnosed still faces, contributes to the need for was almost certainly a death sentence. AIDS activism. Some public health The stigma of AIDS cloaked prevention, officials in the South, the contemporary diagnosis, and treatment in secrecy and epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, suggest shame, and that stigma continues to that the dangers and prevalence of HIV/ persist today. We are “still at risk”, but AIDS seems to be lost among younger as the play explores, the world of AIDS generations, thus contributing to a lack activism has shifted. of dedicated prevention and testing. Additionally, with the wavering future of Nov 15, 1985: Demonstrators protest in NYC the Affordable Care Act, the numbers of uninsured (and thus untreated) patients with AIDS could swiftly increase, especially amongst the already harder hit communities struggling with poverty and access to care. The activist fight seems to continually be one of education, of awareness, and the pressing need for In a fitting nod to NCTC’s origin as an educational theatre free and widely available testing and Cast from the About Face program, our Conservatory performed at the top of the event production of LE SWITCH treatment. photo by Michael Brosilow 2017-2018 SEASON NCTC 6 DRAMATURGY CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE Where once AIDS was a death housing, and inflated criminal charges. US sentence, shrouded in fear and without House Representative Barbara Lee has viable treatment options, there is now proposed the Repeal HIV Discrimination the ability to live with the disease being Act, which would ban federal and state virtually undetectable. While an outright laws that would discriminate against vaccine has yet to be developed, PrEP someone solely as a result of their HIV (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) can virtually status. There is a necessary and vital eliminate the risk of infection, but access element to contemporary AIDS activism, to the drug is limited depending on the and it builds on the activism of all those country. Antiretroviral drugs, taken after from the 80s onward. diagnosis, can bring the level of the virus Awareness, education - the in an infected person low enough to be uniting factors of activism “then and now” improbable for them to pass the disease - stand at the heart of NCTC’s program, on to someone else. Many of the millions YouthAware, which was the first program of people living with AIDS, however, are in the US that toured schools to educate not on any form of therapy. Some of students on AIDS. While widespread those with the disease do not even know access to healthcare and testing are new they have it. While cases worldwide have contemporary fronts in the fight against decreased, in Eastern Europe, Central AIDS, it is education that will always be Asia, and certain populations within the the light that shines through. The past US, they’re increasing. may not always stay in the past, but The characters in Still at the future is brightest when we absorb Risk are all interacting with AIDS/ the lessons available to us and carry HIV activism, whether peripherally or them through to the next generation of directly, and the conflict between Kevin activists. and Byron is representative of the initial and current activist action around AIDS. Ed Decker walks with SF AIDS Foundation In a wealthy liberal city with socialized at San Francisco’s Pride Parade 1985 health care, AIDS ceases to be a fear, and the stigma of homosexuality is hardly a concern. To those who lived through the tragedy and travesty of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, this freedom and lack of concern for the disease’s deadly past can appear flippant. But AIDS education is still minimal, even in privileged communities, and almost non-existent in poorer ones. There is continued criminalization of the HIV positive community both worldwide and in the US. HIV positive status can result in the loss of child custody, the loss of A NOTE from the Playwright I was working as an actor (and a waiter) when I found out that my best friend, David, had become HIV positive. This was when there was no hope and very few treatment options. I stopped auditioning because I didn’t want to go out of town and leave my friend; we did not have a lot of time left. After David died, I lost 8 more friends within 2 weeks. It was everywhere. Like so many others, I was furious, scared and heartbroken. I stopped acting and went to work with new clients at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The agency, at that time, was primarily made up of people like me. We had quit our regular jobs and joined the fight. We became activists and caretakers. We became soldiers in this war. As Paul Monette said, “Grief is a sword, or it is nothing.” Still at Risk is a story of one person who went to war, survived, but lost his way. There are thousands upon thousands of survival stories from this plague; this is just one. It is an incredibly personal story although it is not my story. There are certainly some parallels with my own experience (as well as more than one embarrassing moment that for some reason I have decided to put into a play for all to enjoy…), but Kevin’s journey is very different from mine.