AIDS And Its Casualties

The dead and the dying are clearly casualties of the AIDS epidemic. but so too are those left to care for them, mourn them, or speak for them.

In Reginald T. Jackson's play, Sins of the Brother, which runs until January 30 [1993], at the center of the rainbow, 147 W. 25th Street, in Manhattan, we meet two of these casualties, who also represent a generational gap within the gay community--Butch (Jeffery Haskins), a flamboyant, sassy, forty-something black drag queen from the free-love '70s and Brian (Francis Fabrizio), a young white AIDS activist of the safer-sex '90s.

Both share the same living quarters, a Brooklyn brownstone owned by Butch (Brian rents an upstairs room) and they both share the pain and anger brought on by the health crisis. However, they deal with their problems in a different way. Butch reminisces, while listening to Motown music and gazing at photo albums, about the good old days when "I was in my prime. Talk about a Georgia Peach. I could make a mouth water." Brian, on the other hand, while facing his AIDS-induced fear of sex, lashes out at Brian, who he sees as a member of a generation who are not victims of AIDS, but the culprits. "I haven't had sex with anyone because what's the point? What can we do? What's left? Everything is supposed to kill you. Frankly, I'm pissed off at you, at all of you, for denying me my chance."

Sins of the Brother is another controversial play from the Rainbow Repertory Theatre, a group which specializes in staging productions that explore issues of concern to the gay people of color communities.

Not only does Sins of the Brother have a drag queen as one of the central characters (this is certain to have many in the audience squirming in their seats because drag queens are regarded as embarrassments to the gay community), it also deals with another touchy issue, personal responsibility in a time of plague. When HIV-negative Brian, inspired by a newspaper article about some gays in San Francisco knowingly infecting themselves with HIV, mixes a beaker of tainted blood into his food, he tells a dumbfounded Butch: "While everyone else dies off, what am I supposed to do? Watch? Run things all by myself? The people who died will be martyrs and I just want to be a part of it. I don't want to be left out anymore." Is this a cowardly or lazy way to avoid taking responsibility for one's life, one's health? What are the consequences of such an act on the already
fragile health care system?

These are the kinds of issues that will have audiences, gay and straight, leaving the theatre  asking themselves and each other thought-provoking and harrowing, but necessary, questions.

This previously unpublished article was submitted to the New York Amsterdam News on January 12,1993.