Empowered, Liberated & Safe
Telling a story to encourage others to tell theirs
“One in Two” playwright Donja R. Love..
BY DAVID NOH
In my estimation, the undoubted
best new play of 2019
was Donja R. Love’s “One in
Two,” and I had the privilege
of meeting this dynamic, fresh
voice in American theater right at
the Signature Center on West 42nd
Street where his play runs through
January 12. As magnetic and colorful
in his appearance as in his
writing, let me let him tell the story
of how this most wonderful creation
came to be.
“For me, it always is the most
marginalized of folks who seldom
get to hold space and share our
stories, which is why we are in the
place we’re in right now, as my title
says, that one in two Black, queer/
bisexual men having HIV, along
with one in eleven white men, and
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one in four Latinos. The most dominant
of these individuals holds
the most space with people listening,
while no one pays any attention
to us saying, ‘Hey, we see this
is happening, we can’t do this on
our own anymore, we need help!’
“I recently read that they are
starting to make Truvada and
PrEP absolutely free under a plan
announced by the federal Department
of Health and Human Services
that is open to people without
prescription drug coverage,
which is great. But with that said,
I take medication every day and
a monthly refi ll is over $3,000 a
month. Luckily, I have programs
and amazing insurance and don’t
have to pay anything. But what
about my brothers and sisters living
in Jackson, Michigan, without
these programs? Who can’t afford
it? What does that look like?”
As intriguingly novel as his subject
is the construction of Love’s
play, which has his cast of three
African-American men (Jamyl
Dobson, Edward Mawere, and Leland
Fowler) exchanging roles randomly
each performance as the result
of audience participation and
games of chance.
“It was my way of conveying the
fact of anyone contracting HIV, as
Donté, my central character, does.
Could I do it so the audience isn’t
at fi rst aware of it, until they’re
in the middle of it, thinking, ‘Oh,
God, I am a party to this.’ And this
scared the crap out of my director,
Stevie Walker-Webb, and my
cast, for what I was asking them
to do, once we started, there was
no turning back. I thought, ‘I hope
what I am doing is right,’ and then
I went back to the works I admire,
which you mentioned this rather
reminded you of — ‘Waiting for
Godot’, ‘No Exit’ — and thought,
‘Just keep going.’
“This was the fi rst play I wrote
completely on my phone. I would
ordinarily start it in a marble notebook
and then transfer it on to my
laptop, but I was in such a state
with this one that I couldn’t even
get out of bed to go over to my laptop.
So I just opened my Notebook
application and started it. What
would we do without technology?
Of his cast, Love enthused, “Our
actors are rock stars, and we found
them through my director, the New
Group, and casting director Judy
Henderson. We knew going in that
the actors had to play every single
character and that’s not easy.
There was one moment when Casting
said, ‘You know, you’re giving
these actors like 20 pages of sides.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But they have to be
able to play everything.’
“For preparation for the cast’s
auditions, we landed on Donté, his
mother, Trade a macho homeboy
trick for Donté, and Banjii Cunt a
fl amboyantly sassy queen, particularly
the latter two, as they are so
different to play. I am a big listener
to the Divine Force, which guided
us, and these actors have amazing
craft and skill, and with a play like
this you are going to be spending a
lot of time with them, so you want
people you can hang around with.
It’s not just a working/ professional
relationship, it’s a personal one,
where you want to be able to have a
kiki with them afterwards, spend
time together — and those were
these actors.
“I told them, ‘I know I wrote this,
but I don’t know what it requires
you to do.’ I want to make sure that
I am here to empower and liberate
you as much as I can because
there will be times when I or your
director will not be here, and it will
just be you. I want to make sure
that you all feel empowered, liberated,
and safe as much as possible
on that stage because you literally
will not know which part you will
be doing until 10 to 15 minutes
into the play.”
The actors are at all times completely
fearless and often naked in
every best sense of the word, which
Love recognized.
“It’s a lot to ask and I think Stevie
said it best one day as we rehearsed:
‘This is the most exciting
thing I’ve ever done, and the most
terrifying.’ We all breathed a sigh:
‘You said exactly what we were feeling!
We’re excited but at the same
time feeling, “I don’t think I wanna
do this!”’
“If I can be candid, my anxiety
level during this process was higher
than anything I’d ever felt in my
entire life. It was during the second
week of previews that I had to go
to the hospital because I thought I
was surely going to have an anxiety
attack because of how personal
and complex to work out it was. I
was like, ‘Why did you do this?’ I
actually knew why but ‘Why did I
put myself through this?’ was my
big question.”
The rehearsal process was a lavish
fi ve weeks, Love said, “instead
of the usual three. The New Group
was amazing, giving us fi ve weeks
— although I could have used one
more. We researched it and found
no previous play model for any re-
➤ DONJA R. LOVE, continued on p.21
January 2 - January 15, 2 20 020 | GayCityNews.com
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