November 2008

“The Wisdom of Loving Carefully: An HIV Theory Formulated in Uganda Finds Theatrical Relevance in Lesotho.”

My theatre experiences in Africa have been built on synchronicities. One of these fortuitous intersections involves Uganda, science writer Helen Epstein, New York’s Housing Works Bookstore and The Winter/Summer Institute—an international project whose aim is to create theatre in Africa focusing on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Epstein first went to Uganda in 1993, and over the next 10 years she traveled throughout eastern and southern Africa investigating how governments, health care workers, NGOs, AIDS activists, traditional healers and ordinary people were responding to the ravages of AIDS. Her travels and ongoing research eventually took her back to Uganda to look at that nation’s impressive and singular success (beginning in the late 1990s) at decreasing the spread of HIV. MORE