My name is James and I am a gay theatre maker, based in the UK. I am creating a piece of verbatim theatre about what HIV means to the gay community today; the aim of the piece is so dispel many of the myths, stigma, misinformation and prejudice that surrounds HIV, and also to create a sort of "oral history" record of the gay community's thoughts on HIV today.

Verbatim theatre is based on interviews; essentially, I will be interviewing lots of different gay and bisexual men with different stories and perspectives, and from all sorts of different backgrounds; these interviews are recorded on tape and in the finished theatre piece actors play the people I've interviewed and say the words spoken by them. In rehearsal and performance the actors will listen to the interview on headphones and will recreate the exact phrasing, intonation, etc, of what they can hear. This is to ensure that they more accurately represent the characters they are playing.

All interviews are anonymous and those who are involved won't be named or identified in the piece or programme, etc.

One of the things I want to piece to explore is bareback sex and what this means to the gay community; its important to me that piece be a celebration of gay culture and sexuality and I'm not going to demonise or condemn those who practice bareback sex as "HIV pushers" or anything like that; the reality is obviously much more complicated and subtle than that!

If you're interested in knowing more about the project then do please email me and I can send you some more information, or message me on here. My email address is jamesbounds@gmail.com. As the interviews need to take place in person unfortunately I can only meet people in the UK.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you,

James

x

My name is James and I am a gay theatre maker, based in the UK. I am creating a piece of verbatim theatre about what HIV means to the gay community today; the aim of the piece is so dispel many of the myths, stigma, misinformation and prejudice that surrounds HIV, and also to create a sort of "oral history" record of the gay community's thoughts on HIV today.

Verbatim theatre is based on interviews; essentially, I will be interviewing lots of different gay and bisexual men with different stories and perspectives, and from all sorts of different backgrounds; these interviews are recorded on tape and in the finished theatre piece actors play the people I've interviewed and say the words spoken by them. In rehearsal and performance the actors will listen to the interview on headphones and will recreate the exact phrasing, intonation, etc, of what they can hear. This is to ensure that they more accurately represent the characters they are playing.

All interviews are anonymous and those who are involved won't be named or identified in the piece or programme, etc.

One of the things I want to piece to explore is bareback sex and what this means to the gay community; its important to me that piece be a celebration of gay culture and sexuality and I'm not going to demonise or condemn those who practice bareback sex as "HIV pushers" or anything like that; the reality is obviously much more complicated and subtle than that!

If you're interested in knowing more about the project then do please email me and I can send you some more information, or message me on here. My email address is jamesbounds@gmail.com. As the interviews need to take place in person unfortunately I can only meet people in the UK.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you,

James

x

Hi James

Any expenses / fees budgeted for these 'frank interviews'?

interesting idea tell me more