Cultural Impact of AIDS

Sean Strub is a long-time activist and writer who has been HIV positive for more than 33 years. He is the founder of POZ Magazine, the leading independent global source of information about HIV, and served as its publisher and executive editor from 1994 to 2004.

He presently serves as the executive director of the Sero Project, a network of people with HIV fighting for freedom from stigma and injustice and as treasurer of the US Caucus of PWHA Organizations. He served on the board of directors of the Global Network of People living with HIV/AIDS from 2009 to 2012 and as co-chair of its North American affiliate from 2011 to 2012.

Strub was active with the People With AIDS Coalition/New York in the mid 80s, co-chaired the fundraising committee for ACT UP/New York in the late 80s, and in 1990 became the first openly HIV positive person to run for the US Congress. He was the producer of David Drake’s hit play, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, which has now been performed in more than 20 countries. In 2010, he co-founded the Positive Justice Project and produced the short documentary film, HIV is Not a Crime, about HIV criminalisation in the US.

He has also been active in environmental protection, historic preservation and community redevelopment efforts in rural Pike County, Pennsylvania, since the late 1990s. He has helped launch cultural festivals, pass an open space preservation bond and in 2007, produced Nature’s Keepers, a documentary film about the conservation and land stewardship history in the region.

His new book, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival, will be published by Scribner in January 2014.

Dion Kagan is a writer, editor and researcher. His writing has appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, LitHub, Metro, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, The Conversation, Archer and more. He is a regular columnist for The Lifted Brow and a co-host on fortnightly culture podcast The Rereaders. His book, Positive Images, came out with I.B. Tauris in 2018. Dion has a PhD from the University of Melbourne where he lectured in gender and cultural studies. He is now a books editor at Black Inc.

Jessica Whitbread works in the realm of social practice and community art, often merging art and activism to engage a diversity of audiences in critical dialogue. Whitbread often uses her own her own body and experience as a queer woman living with HIV, as the primary site of her work. In her head the entire world is a pantless tea party, full of awkward yet playful interactions that challenge hetero-normative and mainstream assumptions about bodies, sexuality and desire. Her ongoing projects include No Pants No Problem, Tea Time, and PosterVIRUS (AIDS ACTION NOW!).

In 2012 Jessica was elected to be the youngest global chair of the International Community of Women Living with HIV and in April 2014 shifted roles to be the network’s interim global networks director.

She is the founder of the first International Chapter of Young Women, Adolescents and Girls living with HIV as well as a long-standing steering committee member for AIDS ACTION NOW! a direct action group in Toronto.

In 2014 Jessica published her first book, Tea Time: Mapping Informal Networks of Women Living with HIV, a photo collection of her Tea Time practice.

Paul Woodward is a director, performer and writer based in Melbourne.

Paul has worked as a director/performer/writer for the physical/experimental theatre companies Sculpture (West Midlands) and Glory What Glory (Lancaster/London). Graduating with an MA (distinction) in Theatre at Royal Holloway, he consolidated his research into body/sign systems in Theatres of Asia and its application to Sign Language Theatres of the Deaf.

Paul was a senior lecturer in Drama and Physical Theatre at St.Mary’s University College for 16 years and is now currently working full time on a practice as research PhD, investigating the useful application of performance theory and practice to HIV (dis)closure at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, after winning a double international scholarship there.

Whilst lecturing Paul remained active as a professional director/dramaturg and regularly collaborated with physical theatre practitioners Maxine Doyle (First Person dance/theatre and Punchdrunk productions) and Dr Josephine Machon (Middlesex and Brunel University) investigating the interface between the body, dance, physical theatre, popular cultures and technology.

Paul has delivered physical theatre workshops nationally and internationally including the international festival of therapy and theatre, Lodz, Poland with the Theatre of the Deaf, in Knysner, South Africa working with HIV positive children in the townships with MadAboutArt, Lilongwe in Malawi with Theatre for a Change. Most recently Paul has been working with the Melbourne based medical charity Possible Dreams International who operate projects in rural Swaziland.

Here he is leading storytelling empowerment workshops and performance with AIDS orphans and HIV+ children. His ongoing work in Swaziland was showcased in the March 2013 Possible Dreams Choir tour of Melbourne that demonstrated a powerful fusion of song and spoken word stories.

Paul joined The Quest for Gay Men in October 2011 where he has developed a unique storytelling and performance curriculum to empower gay men to tell their life stories with greater ease and confidence and fluidity. He was the acting dramaturg for an adaptation of the popular psychology book The Velvet Rage by Dr Alan Downs which was first presented at the Sarah Siddons Theatre, London in November 2012 as The Velvet Rage: Real Life Stories then adapted further as Beneath The Surface: Gay Life Stories at the Embassy Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in February 2013, and most recently an ensemble piece for gay men between the ages of 40-65 entitled The Haunting which premiered in October 2014 at the Pinter Theatre, Mile End, London.

Since moving to Melbourne in March 2012 Paul has been working with Living Positive Victoria as a health education speaker. For the organisation’s unique Positive Speakers Bureau, Paul is commissioned to visit schools, workplaces, community groups and prisons to use the power of autobiographical storytelling as a means to facilitate powerful and interactive HIV and sexual health education in Victoria.

Paul continues to be an internationally published scholar in the field of performance theatre, ritual and the body, and the potential uses of performance theatre in HIV education and is currently working on a book entitled The Performativity of (dis)closure.

Paul is working on an ongoing solo storytelling piece about his relationship with his late father entitled Fathers & Feathers that he initially developed in collaboration with the legendary US performance storyteller and gay rights activist Tim Miller in March 2013 and which was premiered in October 2013 at the Pinter Theatre, Mile End, London, and which was specially commissioned by Monash Centre of Performing Arts to be reworked and performed at the Alexandra Theatre (Clayton), the George Jenkins Theatre (Frankston), and Space 28 at the VCA in March 2014.