Guest Blog: A Forgotten Epidemic – Directing Safe Sex and On Tidy Endings

Dan Phillips

Dan Phillips writes for West End Frame about directing Safe Sex and On Tidy Endings at the Tristan Bates Theatre.

When a small community of gay men in San Francisco in the late 70s began to fall down dead, the fears of a ‘gay cancer’ quickly got around. By the mid-80s over 15,000 Americans had died of what was to become known as AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) and across the pond another 8,000 had died by the same time. In this time of fear and confusion, the one thing to strive and grow was art.

There are plenty of examples of theatre which looked to explore the AIDS epidemic and tried to offer a viewpoint from within the community it had hit the hardest. Companies such as Doric Wilson’s The Other Side of Silence and Gay Sweatshop in the UK were working with new writers and producing gay theatre from and for the gay community. This was the first time gay artists had a voice and were starting to become visible within the wider community; however, it was AIDS that truly outed the entire gay world. Works like Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart broke ground in the early 80s with its portrayal of a man with AIDS on stage, and along with Tony Kushner’s Angels In America and a little later Jonathan Larson’s rock musical Rent, there was a sudden burst of plays that had something to say and something to show. These are all very important pieces of theatre which have all made it onto the big screen (The Normal Heart being the last to make the transition after its 2013 Tony Award for best revival) but they all have the same flaw, they only really deal with people with the virus.

When I first read On Tidy Endings by Harvey Fierstein what I really loved is that AIDS was being talked about but we weren’t watching characters wither and die, but instead, the people they leave behind, perhaps the real victims. Fierstein, himself, broke ground with his first trilogy of plays Torch Song Trilogy, which went on to win the 1983 Tony Award for best play, which in a time of unrest around the LGBT community was a huge accomplishment. What followed was another trilogy of plays that explored the angst and fear of gay men amidst a world of AIDS. 

The first play, entitled Manny and Jake, explores the worries about meeting someone for a one night stand. However, it is written in a very exploratory way which, in my opinion, doesn’t work on a modern stage. Despite an understanding of its historical context the first decision when making the move from page to stage was to let this opening play let go. As a director it is your job to read a play and find the heart of the story and when everything else is stripped away, what is left that speaks to an audience but with all the want in the world I failed to find a way to make Manny and Jake work for a contemporary audience. This has been criticised by the press, but another important element of directing is to know when a play works and when it does not and for that I stand by my decision. 

The second play, which gives the trilogy its title, Safe Sex, was once again written in an exploratory way, embracing the heavily symbolic style of theatre in the 80s by placing the two main characters on a giant see-saw in order to represent the constant ups and downs of any relationship. Set in real time, the play shows an argument between gay lovers left behind as their friends had died around them. What is the most moving about the text is its message that AIDS didn’t just kill people but made it impossible for those who survived to be physically and emotionally intimate in the same way again. This simple concept of, those left behind, had not been explored before and it was this that I felt had to be shared now. The first move was to strip away the gimmicks and concentrate on the text, and so instead of setting it atop a children’s plaything, it became an intimate night in bed between two long-term lovers. One was to become the voice of the older generation, the gay man who saw through decriminalisation and struggles to accept the changing world and one the voice of the younger generation, the gay men who never knew the feeling of illegality but only of freedom. Due to lack of character backstory it was incredibly freeing to find the humanity to the roles and not only explore who they were but where they came from. 

The final play and perhaps the most developed is On Tidy Endings. Anyone who knows Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy will know Widows and Children First. Like this previous final instalment Fierstein uses the traditional play format and it is here that he excels. The play is set again in real time and witnesses the two lovers of Colin, a man who died of AIDS, as they meet to sign the deeds to Colin’s apartment. The real core of this play is the lack of rights for gay men, especially when it came to death and in a country where same sex marriage was finally being not only noticed but legalised, it was important to me that through the production of this play, people understand just how far we have come. This brings me to my final conceptual decision, anglicising Fierstein’s dialogue. 

AIDS is a difficult subject to cover, and my greatest challenge as a director was to make sure the text was not overly ‘preachy’ or sentimental but instead remained truthful to the characters that Fierstein wrote almost 30 years ago. In order to do this I felt that it was imperative that the audience connected to the characters and the subject matter and I didn’t feel that this was possible in an American dialect and accent, another decision which I have taken hits about but one which I passionately believe. 

Whether gay or straight, the history of the LGBT community is a fascinating and heart-breaking one and as an area that is not covered in education in this country it became quite evident the increasing responsibility we have to produce these types of plays and help them get to a wider audience.

Dan Phillips

Dan graduated from Dartington College of Arts in Theatre and Arts Management. His directing credits include: the welsh premieres John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch and The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown and the UK premiere of Andrew Lippa's The Addams Family. He recently completed an MA in theatre directing at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London and has written a number of short plays and educational films about theatre as well as a book “My Desperate Cling to Youth". Dan is also a member of the West End Frame reviewing team.

Directed by Dan Phillips, On Tidy Endings and Safe Sex runs at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden until 17th May. Please visit www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk for further information and tickets.

Visit Dan's website: www.dan-phillips.com

Photo Credit 2&3: Jamie Scott-Smith

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