Review: Donja R. Love’s ‘one in two’ Reminds Us That Those Living With HIV Are More Than a Number
Love’s play offers an almost voyeuristic glimpse into his life, creating a deal with audiences to take action.
By D.R. Lewis
June 13, 2023
Originally Published in Washington City Paper
As a tidal wave of anti-LGBTQIA bills cascades through state legislatures, the undercurrent of fear felt by so many queer and trans people can seem at odds with the rainbow displays of (often corporate) Pride Month celebrations. And, after the parade has passed by, our community’s most vulnerable, including those living with HIV, are too often left to once again fend for themselves. That acute disparity between celebration and survival makes Donja R. Love’s one in two, presented by Mosaic Theater Company and running through June 25 at Atlas Performing Arts Center, feel all the more urgent.
one in two is a play for the other 11 months of the year. Its title refers to a 2016 Centers for Disease Control report that estimated one in two gay and bisexual Black men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, a reminder that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is far from over. In one in two, Love—himself a person living with HIV—forces the audience to face the staggering statistics to which so many have become desensitized in the near-half-century since HIV first entered the public consciousness. It further implores us to consider the individuality of those whose lives are still affected by HIV/AIDS, to acknowledge the stark racial disparities among those who are diagnosed, and to fight the odious stigma that continues to stain society’s attitude toward people living with HIV, despite reliable treatment that prevents those with undetectable viral loads from transmitting the virus to others.
Directed by Raymond O. Caldwell with a set by Nadir Bey, lighting by John D. Alexander, and projections by Deja Collins, the production opens in a whitewashed waiting room with harsh fluorescent lighting and a take-a-number ticket dispenser. Overhead screens display a number that grows steadily over the course of the 100-minute play, a striking reminder of the new diagnoses happening every moment. The actors emerge from three identical changing rooms and debate who will play each of the show’s numbered tracks, ultimately leaving the audience to decide. The actors are tagged with barcodes and wear identical costumes, stripping them of their individuality and resigning them to anonymity. On the night I saw the play, Michael Kevin Darnall, Ryan Jamaal Swain, and Justin Weaks played #1, #2, and #3, respectively.
After assigning roles, the characters act out vignettes from the life of Donté, a character whose credentials closely resemble the playwright’s. Among those critical moments are early homoerotic encounters, the moment of his HIV diagnosis, his search for community in support groups, the paradoxically loving rejection of his mother, his descent into alcoholism, and a devastating evening when he teeters on the brink of suicide. These scenes are so apparently ripped from the playwright’s memory and soul that sitting in the audience can at times feel embarrassingly voyeuristic. The weight of these experiences is so great that Love carefully employs moments of affirmation and cautious consent to signal that it’s okay to keep watching and experiencing the story he’s sharing with us. He needs us to see it, and attention must be paid.
The play is in good hands with its performers. Weaks, who won a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Performer last month, proves again in one in two that he is one of Washington’s finest actors. From the first moments of the play, Weaks commands the audience’s attention. He has a remarkable knack for filling the entire space with his performance, but never inappropriately pulls focus from the other actors. Swain, who starred in two seasons of the Ryan Murphy-produced television show Pose, offers a gentler performance that feels complementary, but never secondary, to Weaks’. And Darnall, who played Donté the night I saw the play, is exceptionally focused, balancing Love’s substantial text with quiet but visible turmoil. In a breathtaking scene where a chatty nurse (Weaks) delivers Donté’s HIV diagnosis, Darnall’s near-silent emotional annihilation was so palpable it practically drowned out the lines.
one in two makes clear that Love, stewarded by Caldwell’s stripped-down production, is a playwright for our time. He rejects the kind of passive theatergoing that audiences are accustomed to and writes with a gravity from which one cannot help but feel a growing pulse of discontent in their seat. Through Donté, Love wrestles with the lethal stereotypes that often mark stories of people living with HIV/AIDS. He rejects society’s capitalistic insistence on trauma and death, instead allowing his own story of survival and success to win out. Love’s unapologetic and irrefusable deal with his audience is that in exchange for allowing us into his world, he demands that we sit up, lean forward, and leave the theater prepared to take action.
“So many stories are about people dying from AIDS and not about people living with HIV,” Love writes in the play.
Though red ribbons and coffin-size quilt panels of yesteryear have given way to the corporate-branded rainbow merch of modern Pride celebrations, Love’s voice rises from the crowd to remind us that the battle is not yet won. While advancements in testing, treatment, and prevention have been transformative, the harsh reality is that gay and bisexual Black men accounted for a quarter of new HIV diagnoses in 2019 and, among that group, 75 percent of new diagnoses were in those aged 13-34, according to the CDC. But, Love reminds us, those statistics are made of individual people with individual stories. And in his most straightforward, clarion line, Love delivers the show’s biggest blow: “One in two is still an epidemic.”
one in two, written by Donja R. Love, directed by Raymond O. Caldwell, and presented by Mosaic Theater Company, runs through June 25 at Atlas Performing Arts Center. mosaictheater.org. $29–$64.
(L-R) Michael Kevin Darnall, Justin Weaks, and Ryan Jamaal Swainl in Donja R. Love’s one in two. Photo by Chris Banks.