Theatre review: In My Day is a moving, and surprisingly funny, tribute to Vancouver's early HIV history
The vividly choreographed verbatim play whirls through the eras, from West End disco heyday through loss, activism, and drug cocktails
Cameron Peal and Alen Dominguez in In My Day. Photo by Sarah Race
The Cultch and Zee Zee Theatre present In My Day at the Historic Theatre to December 11
IN MY DAY doesn’t just serve as a vivid reminder of the courage and struggle when HIV hit the West End in the mid-1980s and early 1990s; it completely rethinks what a “verbatim play” looks like.
That form draws directly from interview transcripts—in this case, ones with longtime HIV survivors as well as their friends and caregivers from the first tragic 15 years of the epidemic. (The 100-plus testimonials were drawn from a UVic oral-history project.) Often, verbatim plays consist of standing monologues spoken directly to the audience. But playwright Rick Waines, working closely with director-dramaturg Shawn Macdonald and choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, turns In My Day into a whirlwind of flowing scenes—often splitting up stories between characters who relive conversations and act out sequences.
You’ll be carried along with it—from the COVID-wary present, back to the pre-HIV glory days of the West End, through the devastating loss, the body-wracking cocktails of drugs, and the spread of the disease beyond the gay population. One minute the crowd of 10 actors is pub-crawling from the Gandy Dancer to Luv-A-Fair, then throwing themselves into a throbbing disco pit. The next, the group is hoisting placards and drawing chalk body outlines on sidewalks as part of ACT UP protests.
At two hours in two acts, In My Day flies by, with plenty of laughs and tears along the way. A lot of the play is about caring, and you can viscerally feel the love and support between the cast members—a talented and committed rainbow nation of young actors. (Nick Miami Benz, Scott Button, Ivy Charles, Alen Dominguez, Braiden Houle, Cameron Peal, Sabrina Symington, Jackson Wai Chung Tse, and Kelsey Kanatan Wavey are strong across the board in their multiple roles.) Alongside them, stage veteran Patti Allan makes a welcome return, bringing comedic finesse to everyone from a community nurse to Bonnie Henry in a hilarious ode to the chief health officer’s infamous speech singing the praises of “glory holes” at the height of COVID summer 2020.
The ensemble in In My Day. Photo by Sarah Race
For anyone who lived through the HIV epidemic here, the first-person accounts will bring memories flooding back. Think odes to ACT-UP activists like John Kozachenko, who terrorized the likes of a certain premier and his headband-sporting wife. Or the pages upon pages of obits that would run each week in the West Ender. Or the hygienically questionable shag carpet that lined the walls of the Shaggy Horse.
Audience members will have their own emotionally gutting associations. For some it will be the sight of weary figures curled under home-knit Afghan blankets—a scene agonizingly familiar to anyone who lost a friend in the early days when the disease took young, healthy people seemingly overnight. For others, memories might flood back in the story from the Doll & Penny’s server who would pull money out of a slush fund for those needing a coffee and human connection—their incomes gone.
For anyone who didn’t live through the epidemic, the play is an important, vivid history lesson. In My Day pays tribute to the people who fought for queer freedoms here—many of them only to be taken later by HIV. There’s also a moving nod to the losses in the arts community. More than anything, writer Waines doesn’t shy away from showing the mistakes—the lack of inclusivity that drove different patient groups apart, an urgent lesson in these divided days when a pandemic still lurks. And he’s careful to give props where they’re due: “Gay white men need to know how much the lesbians did for us,” one character tells the audience directly.
Waines is equally careful to work in the wider complexities of the illness, especially through Indigenous and other non-white voices. The playwright, who lives with HIV and was a well-known ally of the movement in his work with BCPWA, has also picked out testimonials that are refreshingly candid about gay sexuality and the effects on it of HIV—from issues of consent through to condom use and some imaginative, health-department-approved attempts at “safe sex” gatherings. Importantly, the stories get at the way stigma and shame were so horribly tangled up in the disease. Some convinced themselves that they wouldn’t get HIV if they didn’t engage in derided practices like bathhouses; and note the way the word “promiscuous” was used by the press. In one scene, an interviewee jokes sardonically that he’s still Facebook friends with the guy who infected him.
Overall, In My Day has much more humour than you might expect from a play about a virus that decimated an entire, thriving community in only a matter of of years. Seen another way, that humour reveals the resilience at the heart of these fascinating, authentic-feeling stories. Full of dance, love, and ironically fun fog machines, the play is as much about life as loss.
Catch it if you remember, see it if you’re starting to forget, and check it out if this is all news to you. In My Day offers a chance to revisit a seminal part of this city’s history, directly through firsthand accounts.
Related Articles
