London Performance Studios is delighted to host the launch of The AIDS Plays Project: Queer Plays from Trailblazing Writers Lost to HIV/AIDS, a new play anthology from Methuen Drama, edited and introduced by Alastair Curtis, founder of The AIDS Plays Project.
The evening will begin with a Q&A between Alastair Curtis and Amelia Abraham, who has written the book’s preface, followed by a script-in-hand reading of Jerker (or The Helping Hand), last performed at LPS in 2024. Casting will be announced shortly.
One of seven plays collected in the anthology, Jerker (or the Helping Hand) was written by Robert Chesley, a trailblazing San Francisco playwright whose plays celebrate sexual liberation and dramatise the impact of HIV/AIDS on the queer community.
The anthology brings together six further plays staged by The AIDS Plays Project at LPS between 2023 and 2025, written by queer playwrights whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS and whose work has largely vanished from the contemporary stage: Charles Ludlam, James Kirkwood Jr., George Whitmore, Harry Kondoleon, Alan Bowne and Colm Ó Clúbhán.
Alongside these scripts, the book features interviews with surviving friends and collaborators, biographies, photographs and new writing by Amelia Abraham, Sam Moore, Lauren J. Joseph, Marcelo Dos Santos, Jack Holden, James Ijames, Charlie Josephine, Margaret Perry, Jordan Tannahill, and Michael Bronski, whose essays invite a new generation to rediscover and reinterpret these neglected queer works.
Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the night.
About
Amelia Abraham (she/they) is a journalist, editor and author from London. She writes for Art Review, The Guardian, British Journal of Photography, The Observer, Dazed, AnOther, and other titles on arts, culture and more. Her books include Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture and We Can Do Better Than This: 35 Voices on the Future of LGBTQ+ Rights. Her first edited photography book, Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife, published by MACK Books, is a two-hundred image survey on the history of photographing queer nightlife.
Alastair Curtis (he/him) is a writer, director and founder of The AIDS Plays Project. He directed all seven plays staged at LPS by The AIDS Plays Project as part of the Associate Artist programme. His writing has been published in Frieze, AnOther, The Economist, Prospect, and The Observer. Sweetheart, his debut short film, premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2025.
The AIDS Plays Project is a theatre company dedicated to reviving, archiving and republishing the work of queer playwrights whose careers and lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS. Striving for cultural recovery and repair, it seeks to reconnect contemporary audiences and young queer artists with a lost generation of playwrights.
“A loving act of preservation that doubles as a radical act of rediscovery. By staging queer work that has unfairly slipped into obscurity—and in some cases, never been performed before—Curtis creates an ongoing dialogue between today’s LGBTQ+ community and an earlier generation that was decimated by HIV/AIDS.”
— AnOther
“An impressive act of queer archaeology giving new life to shows written by playwrights who died of AIDS. Over the last two years, this patient DIY project has begun to expand the queer theatrical canon, re-staging stories from a lost generation with regular seasons of rehearsed readings.”
— Exeunt
No one will be turned away for lack of funds, get in touch with us at info@londonperformancestudios.com