I have a very private obsession with Seth Rudetsky. He’s a Broadway pianist and semi-performer who has translated his HILARIOUS personality into a contract with Playbill.com. His web series, OBSESSED!, features him interviewing different Broadway performers each week about their hijinks and hilarities. I bring him up because I recently read a BBC article about the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Southern US, because of people’s reluctance to speak about the subject. The relgious leaders don’t want to emphasize condom use because they don’t want to imply permission for sex. Members of the community don’t want to be seen going into clinics, because it may bring shame to their families. The South has the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the country, and one of the main reasons is because of silence.
Now, Seth Rudetsky relates to this, because he had on his program a woman named Kate Shindle. She played Vivian Wood in the OBC of Legally Blonde. She was also Miss America. In this video she tells the story of how she used her platform of AIDS awareness to infiltrate Southern schools who invited Miss America. She knew schools banked on the name of “Miss America”, and wouldn’t expect that woman to speak about HIV/AIDS.
I think this is awesome. AWESOME. How do we get HIV/AIDS teaching into places that are very conservative. One technique that companies like DramAide and Drama For Life (both based in South Africa) use is puppets. Drama for Life particularly is a puppet-centric company that teaches sexual education. They chose puppets because it was the only way they could give acurate depictions without offending conservative senibilities.
There is a subversive element to a lot of HIV/AIDS education, because a lot of the world is conservative about openly discussing sex. This is neither here nor there, and not what I want to examine. I’m most interested in the way that AIDS activists have managed to use theatre and theatrical techniques to talk about AIDS in a non threatening way. Kate Shindle used her celebrity status to gain an audience. DramAide and Drama for Life give necessary perspective by taking away the human element. All of these are incredible initiatives that are saving lives. Theatre is a truly powerful medium.
