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Celebrating the playwrights whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS. Book forthcoming from @methuendrama December 26. Pre-order & book launch tickets ⬇️
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theaidsplaysproject.com-
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Recent posts
One of the most important books I’ve worked on, with one of the hardest working, committed editors ever. Can’t wait for this to be released into the world - a must for every bookshelf. Look out for launch event details @theaidsplaysproject
Feat. Words by legends including @1jackholden @jwijames @marcelo_dos_santos_p @jordan.tannahill and many more
26 Oct 2026
Welcome to The AIDS Plays Project
@theaidsplaysproject
We aim to produce, archive and celebrate the plays of writers whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS.
We are reviving their plays through inter generational collaboration, creating an accessible archive of queer plays and content, and commissioning new works by emerging queer artists.
Follow for more info, updates and performance announcements.
Film: @elijahorne @louis_khz
Soundtrack: @helennoir
@alastair_curtis
@x.x.kind.x.x
@london_performance_studios
10 Aug 2023
BOOK LAUNCH IN LONDON
Featuring a script-in-hand performance of JERKER by Robert Chesley and a Q/A with Amelia Abraham and Alastair Curtis
7.30pm, 3rd December, London Performance Studios
Tickets on sale now via the link in bio
**
We’re delighted to be hosting our UK book launch this December at London Performance Studios.
The evening will begin with a Q&A between Alastair Curtis, founder of The AIDS Plays Project, and Amelia Abraham, who has written the book’s preface. It is followed by a script-in-hand reading of Jerker (or The Helping Hand), last performed at LPS in 2024. Cast 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 work celebrates sexual liberation and dramatises the impact of HIV/AIDS on the queer community. JERKER is a subversive, lyrical and erotic one-act-play following two gay men in San Francisco whose relationship unfolds entirely over the phone.
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 vital queer works.
Copies of the book, published by Methuen Drama, will be available to purchase on the night.
**
Poster by @born_slippery
Commissioned by @london_performance_studios
30 Oct 2026
BOOK LAUNCH IN LONDON
Featuring a script-in-hand performance of JERKER by Robert Chesley and a Q&A with Amelia Abraham and Alastair Curtis
7.30pm, 3rd December, London Performance Studios
Tickets on sale now via the link in bio
**
We’re delighted to be hosting our UK book launch this December at London Performance Studios.
The evening will begin with a Q&A between Alastair Curtis, founder of The AIDS Plays Project, and Amelia Abraham, who has written the book’s preface. It is followed by a script-in-hand reading of ‘Jerker (or The Helping Hand)’, last performed at LPS in 2024. Cast 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 work celebrates sexual liberation and dramatises the impact of HIV/AIDS on the queer community. ‘Jerker’ is a subversive, lyrical and erotic one-act-play following two gay men in San Francisco whose relationship unfolds entirely over the phone.
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 vital queer works.
Copies of the book, published by Methuen Drama, will be available to purchase on the night.
**
Poster by @born_slippery
Commissioned by @london_performance_studios
30 Oct 2026
BOOK LAUNCH IN LONDON
Featuring a script-in-hand performance of JERKER by Robert Chesley and a Q&A with Amelia Abraham and Alastair Curtis
7.30pm, 3rd December, London Performance Studios
Tickets on sale now via the link in bio
**
We’re delighted to be hosting our UK book launch this December at London Performance Studios.
The evening will begin with a Q&A between Alastair Curtis, founder of The AIDS Plays Project, and Amelia Abraham, who has written the book’s preface. It is followed by a script-in-hand reading of ‘Jerker (or The Helping Hand)’, last performed at LPS in 2024. Cast 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 work celebrates sexual liberation and dramatises the impact of HIV/AIDS on the queer community. ‘Jerker’ is a subversive, lyrical and erotic one-act-play following two gay men in San Francisco whose relationship unfolds entirely over the phone.
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 vital queer works.
Copies of the book, published by Methuen Drama, will be available to purchase on the night.
**
Poster by @born_slippery
Commissioned by @london_performance_studios
30 Oct 2026
“The AIDS Plays Project is a loving act of preservation that doubles as a radical act of rediscovery.”
- AnOther
The AIDS Plays Project returns to @london_performance_studios for one-night only on December 3rd. Stay tuned for tickets this Friday.
Photo: Darragh Hand in ‘Friends of Rio Rita’s’ by Colm Ó Clúbhán, performed at TheirStories (@coco.patron ) at The Standard, London. 📸 by @_he_photo.
25 Oct 2026
Tickets for our first book launch event on 1st December at @boysgallerycafelondon have now sold out! 🎟️
The AIDS Plays Project founder Alastair Curtis will be in conversation with Barry Pierce. Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the gallery and all proceeds from ticket sales will go to the National AIDS Trust. Their conversation will also be available to listen to on the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! podcast at a later date.
Look out for details of our second launch event at @london_performance_studios , to be announced next week.
//
A special World AIDS Day BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! MEETS ... Alastair Curtis in conversation with Barry Pierce
Alastair Curtis (@alastair_curtis ) is a writer, director and founder of The AIDS Plays Project, a campaign to re-stage and republish the work of queer playwrights whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS.
Since 2023, the Project has unearthed forgotten queer plays from the archives and returned them to the stage in sold-out performances across London featuring leading actors and performers from the city’s drag and nightlife scenes. Its work has been praised for “reshaping the queer theatrical canon” (Financial Times).
This World AIDS Day, the Project publishes seven plays with Bloomsbury - some for the very first time - alongside photographs and new biographies of their authors, interviews with surviving friends and collaborators, and essays by contemporary queer playwrights. Edited and introduced by Alastair, the collection offers a sweeping, entertaining, at times gossipy account of queer theatre history.
Barry Pierce (@barrypierce )is a critic and culture writer whose work has appeared in the Sunday Times, the Big Issue, i-D, GQ, and British Vogue.
22 Oct 2026
“Reasons for Staying by Colm Ó Clúbhán is a complicated, surreal, funny and angry masterwork that I found new meaning in on each re-read.”
Margaret Perry
Olivier Award-nominated Irish playwright Margaret Perry responds to Colm Ó Clúbhán’s 1986 play ‘Reasons for Staying’, which we are delighted to be bringing into print for the first time. Ó Clúbhán was an Irish playwright, actor and activist who emigrated to South London in 1973 and penned several plays before his AIDS-related death in 1989 at the age of 34. None of his plays have been published before.
Margaret’s essay is featured in The AIDS Plays Project: Queer Plays from Trailblazing Writers Lost to HIV/AIDS, published by Methuen Drama next month.
Margaret Perry is an Irish playwright and screenwriter based in London. Her plays include ‘Porcelain’ (Abbey Theatre, 2018), ‘Collapsible’ (Edinburgh Fringe, 2019; Dublin Fringe 2019, where it won the Fishamble New Writing Award; Bush Theatre, 2020), ‘Paradise Now!’ (Bush Theatre, 2023), which was nominated for a 2023 Olivier Award, and her adaptation of Maggie Nelson’s ‘Bluets’ (Royal Court, 2024; Schaubühne, 2025). Her plays are published by Nick Hern Books and she is a MacDowell Fellow.
Photos: Jake Bush, including actors Connor Byrne, Cavan Clarke, Liadán Dunlea, Taylor McClaine, Justine Mitchell and Nicky Harris in ’Reasons for Staying’ (2025).
20 Oct 2026
“A screwball romantic comedy involving a sexually-fluid burglar being tied up naked to a kitchen worktop by a sexually-repressed soap opera actor where they sort of fall in love at the end? It is unabashedly itself and undeniably queer.”
Award-winning playwright Marcelo Dos Santos (Backstairs Billy; Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen) responds to the work of James Kirkwood Jr. and his 1975 play ‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead!”, which “feels as fresh, defiant and as emphatic as an exclamation mark’”.
Marcelo’s essay is featured in The AIDS Plays Project: Queer Plays from Trailblazing Writers Lost to HIV/AIDS, published by @methuendrama next month.
Marcelo Dos Santos is a playwright and scriptwriter. His plays include: Backstairs Billy (Michael Grandage Company, West End); Feeling Afraid (Roundabout at Summerhall, Edinburgh; Bush Theatre; Melbourne Arts Centre; Sydney Opera House); Trigger Warning (co-creator, Camden People’s Theatre); New Labour (RADA); Lionboy (adaptation for Complicité, UK and international tour, including New Victory Theater, New York). He was named Most Promising Playwright at the 2024 Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards for Backstairs Billy and received a Fringe First for Feeling Afraid.
Production photos by Henry Mills; featuring Ben Allen, Luca Kamleh-Chapman, Lewis Brown and Florence Keith-Roach in ‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead!’ (2024). Posters by Tom Joyes and Fran Ortega. Archive photos of Kirkwood courtesy of Arthur Beckenstein.
07 Oct 2026
“AIDS severed generational continuity and silenced countless storytellers. By reviving and recovering their work, we begin to reforge those broken links between past and present. This is why The AIDS Plays Project and the publication of ‘The Rights’ matter so deeply. These works fill crucial gaps in queer cultural memory.”
Olivier award-winning actor and writer Jack Holden (Cruise; KENREX; The Line of Beauty) responds to the work of George Whitmore and his rediscovered play ‘The Rights’, which we are honoured to be bringing into print nearly 50 years after it premiered.
Jack’s beautiful essay is featured in The AIDS Plays Project: Queer Plays from Trailblazing Writers Lost to HIV/AIDS, published by @methuendrama next month.
Jack Holden is an actor and writer. His debut play ‘Cruise’, a musical odyssey through Soho and the AIDS crisis, premiered at the Duchess Theatre in 2021 to widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best New Play. His follow-up, ‘KENREX: A True Crime Thriller’, premiered at Sheffield Theatres before sell-out London runs. He also adapted Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker prize-winning novel ‘The Line of Beauty’ for the Almeida Theatre.
Photos by Robert Giard, Henry Mills and Jake Bush; including actors Omar Baroud, Malcolm Sinclair, Julian Ovenden and Rachel Pickup in ’The Rights’ (2025). Posters by Tom Joyes and Fran Ortega.
03 Oct 2026
Explore the history of ‘Spook’, Alan Bowne’s previously unperformed play from 1986, first staged by The AIDS Plays Project in 2025, in
an essay by director Alastair Curtis.
The AIDS Plays Project: Queer Plays by Trailblazing Writers Lost to HIV/AIDS is out December 2026 from @methuendrama.
Photos: Selina Griffiths, Georges Hann, Katherine Kingsley and Alan Turkington in ‘Spook’ (2025), photographed by Henry Mills.
07 Sep 2026
Charles Ludlam objected to being called ‘serious’. Once, when we were on the phone talking about the future, I said, “Well, I see you growing into a very serious playwright.” Oh, he got very angry! “I’m not serious and I don’t intend to be, ever.”
- Lola Pashalinski
Oh my God, ‘Camille’ was brilliant. Boy, did it flip me out! The character was so entertaining and funny. Charles seized your imagination if you were willing to go there. You loved her.
- Charles Busch
In our forthcoming book, Tony-nominated playwright and performer Charles Busch and legendary off-Broadway actor Lola Pashalinski - who starred in the original production of ‘Camille’ — are in conversation with Alastair Curtis. They reflect on what it was like to know and work alongside Charles Ludlam, his extraordinary legacy, and the play ‘Camille’, which we revived in 2023.
The AIDS Plays Project: Queer Plays from Trailblazing Writers Lost to HIV/AIDS, edited and introduced by Alastair Curtis, is now available to pre-order.
Out December 2026 from @methuendrama .
Photos: Lola Pashalinski by Peter Hujar; Ludlam as Marguerite by Peter Hujar; Sue Gives A Fuck, Jeanie Crystal, Alistair Hall, Luke Hornsby, Paul Hilton and Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran in ‘Camille’ (2023), photographed by Henry Mills.
25 Aug 2026
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