Write It Out!, now in its fourth year, continues to traverse new terrain. How? This year with physical programming.
As TheBody has previously reported, Write It Out! is a 10-week program for writers living with HIV. Each year, those writers apply to the program to train in creating original plays about anything they desire. Unlike other writing fellowships, no previous experience is required to participate. As Love has often said while speaking of the program, “We are excited for writers of all levels to apply.”
Whether one has never written anything previously or has published an encyclopedia of works, so long as they are living with HIV, all are welcome to participate.
The program was designed with this open perspective by the award-winning Afro-Queer playwright Donja R. Love. Love tells TheBody that he created it in response to the lack of opportunities afforded to people living with HIV—and because after his diagnosis, he found writing out his own feelings and thoughts to be a lifesaver.
Over the course of 20 meetings, Love guides each year’s new cohort over Zoom, toward breaking down narratives, studying other plays, meeting with accomplished artists in the field, and, finally, developing their own work.
The program culminates in a final sharing, aligned with World AIDS Day, of these newly minted works, with the playwrights collaborating with professional actors and directors to bring their short plays to life. In previous years, this final sharing has been held virtually. The reason why? As Love tells TheBody, to remove the access barrier for anyone who may not be in New York City so that anyone in the world can participate.
That open-door ticket has allowed writers from across the country and in parts of Europe to participate—and audiences all over the world to tune in for the final sharing. But now, for the first time ever, the final presentation of Write It Out! will take place in person, in New York City on Dec. 2 at the LGBT Center.
In the lead-up to this precedent-setting final sharing, Love spoke with TheBody about Write It Out!’s impact, four years in, with a word on where it’s headed next.
The Enduring Battle Against Stigma
Write It Out! Was created in response to a world where HIV stigma persists. As a recent GLAAD survey revealed, out of 2,533 U.S. adults, one-third responded that they would feel uncomfortable interacting with a co-worker living with HIV. External stigma often translates into internalized stigma; according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 80% of people living with HIV experience some kind of internalized stigma, while approximately one-third report feeling “guilty or ashamed” on account of their HIV status.
The pervasive stigmatization of HIV has been used by wrong-minded legislators to “justify” HIV criminalization. To date, 35 states criminalize people living with HIV for “potential exposure” if one does not first share their status, even when transmission does not or cannot occur. Though ostensibly created to prevent new HIV transmissions, history has shown that these laws actually discourage testing, increase stigma, exacerbate disparities, and remain relics of Reagan-era hysteria around LGBTQ folks.
Holding additional marginalized identities further multiplies the adverse consequences of stigma and decriminalization. For instance, women who experience intimate partner violence face an increased risk of acquiring HIV. And, while one in 11 white men who have sex with men are projected to acquire HIV in their lifetimes, that projection jumps up to 50% for Black same-gender-loving men, if current diagnosis rates hold. This sobering statistic inspired Love to write the critically acclaimed play one in two after recognizing that the stakes of this figure were being ignored across the country.
Despite its characterization as a “liberal” or even “liberating” space, the theatre industry is no exception to perpetuating stigma. Speaking of his own personal experience as a queer, Black playwright living with HIV, Love remarks that he often hears from potential producers, “We’ve already seen AIDS plays. We’ve done AIDS plays.” Yet, those plays tend to center protagonists who are white, affluent, and decidedly cisgender.
Looking at the segregation of who and what gets produced, Love says, “We know it is coded and nuanced. It’s never flat-out, ‘Oh no, we can’t do Black work for people living with HIV.’ It’s, ‘Oh, we’ve seen this story; we’ve experienced this story before. Oh, I don’t know if we’ll be able to program this,’ right? Or ‘We’ll have to work to see how we can program this.’”
For Love, the answer to that prompt is, rather than waiting to see, go ahead and build the world you believe in. Though he acknowledges that part of the struggle in building a space for people living with HIV is that HIV stigma is so severe that many people are afraid to publicly share their status or participate in a program that centers them.
This is why Love has carefully crafted Write It Out! to undermine stigma at every turn. This includes the application process, which allows people living with HIV to apply anonymously. For Love, granting anonymity was key because he says the target audience “is not just people who are public, loud, or who advocate for HIV and themselves, but also anyone who has never even said, ‘I have HIV,’ out loud.”
Secondly, the space is exclusive to folks living with HIV, eliminating the labor of explanation and justification expected of people living with HIV in mixed-status spaces. Plus, everyone―from the cohort members to the staff and artists involved in the final presentation, to Love himself―has signed non-disclosure privacy agreements to ensure that Write It Out! is a space where “writers can just breathe.”
And, again, if cohort members want to leave HIV at the door entirely, that’s OK too. Notably, while Write It Out! is a program for writers living with HIV, the plays they write don’t have to be about living with HIV at all. Love says, “You can write about unicorns living on a moon. I will do everything in my power to help you tell that story.”
Stepping Offline for a Physical Future
Love first conceived Write It Out! in 2019, to begin in 2020. And even though he had the support of organizations such as the Lark Theater, National Queer Theater, Mobilizing Our Brothers Initiative, and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the COVID-19 shutdown nearly turned things upside down.
Though he was initially resistant to shifting the program to Zoom, after realizing that doing so would break down access barriers, he jumped full-heartedly into the passport-less freedom of interacting and sharing online―without having to worry about possible COVID-19 transmissions.
But Write It Out! was always intended to exist in person, and with this new presentation, it is finally doing so. As always, in the name of safety and anonymity, the playwrights will not be named or identified unless they wish to be. And as it relates to access, AIDS service organizations and HIV-centered organizations will be able to participate privately.
So even as the world outside continues to pose existential and real threats, cohort members can shed their battle armor and, instead, as Love puts it, “blossom in ourselves and water each other as we grow in who we are and in our journey.”
And what about those of us who sit in the audience?
To quote Love: “We ask those who witness the work to understand the part that they play in stigma. And to start to strategize how we can eradicate stigma together.” Love imagines that the reward for building a stigma-free and liberated world will be the “freedom to just be ourselves.”
In sum, Write It Out! asks folks, “How can we be?” And, in an act of great generosity, its participants help the world to outline the answer.
Write It Out! presents its first in-person final sharing on Saturday, Dec. 2 at the LGBT Center (208 W. 13th St., New York) from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., in honor of World AIDS Day. To RSVP, visit Write It Out!