When Dimitri Moise received his HIV diagnosis, he says he asked himself questions like “Why me?” and “How could I be so stupid?” Although the Broadway actor knew plenty of people living with the virus — a close friend had revealed his diagnosis when Moise was just 19 — accepting his own status took some major self-reflection. “I started to look inward and realized that I had a lot of internalized — not only HIV phobia, but also homophobia,” Moise tells them. The voices in his head were like those many queer men had heard growing up, which said that being gay meant contracting HIV/AIDS, and that a diagnosis was a death sentence.
“It took me a bit of time to tell those voices, Get the hell out of my head, because I'm much stronger than all of that,” says the 27-year-old, who made his Broadway debut in The Book of Mormon fresh out of theatre school, before touring with Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and appearing on The Last OG with Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish. “The more I started to open up, to tell others and do my own research, the more I saw a lot of that shame and fear go away.” With support from his loved ones, Moise quickly sought care and reached an undetectable viral load. Today, the performer and advocate uses his talents to spread awareness and call people to action in fighting an epidemic that continues to disproportionately affect gay and bisexual black men.
When we spoke before rehearsals began for his latest project, Moise said he could hardly open the script without crying. An immersive theatre piece based on conversations with hundreds of men like himself, As Much As I Can was created specifically to humanize a startling CDC statistic: that if infection rates don't change, 1 out of every 2 black men who has sex with men in America will contract HIV in their lifetime. The play returns to New York September 12-16 at Joe’s Pub after playing in Harlem last year and touring around the country.
ViiV Healthcare, an independent global company committed to HIV treatment, conducted the ethnographic research that forms the basis of the play. The original study, called “Meet Me Where I Want to Be,” aimed to develop a more thorough understanding of what drives the epidemic in two of the country’s hardest hit communities — Jackson, Miss., and Baltimore — through conversations with hundreds of gay and bisexual black men affected by HIV. ViiV has also funded the development and production of the play as part of a $10 million initiative to support innovative projects that focus on improving HIV outcomes among black men in Jackson and Baltimore. If the study lends human voices to dire statistics, the play brings those voices to life in the hopes that audiences will finally hear them and feel the need to act.
“For whatever reason, nowadays [we] have a difficult time with empathy,” says Sarah Hall, who compiled the play from ViiV’s research and further conversations with men in those communities. “People are saying they understand, but I don't really think they understand.” Hall, who runs Harley & Co., a creative studio that creates brand experiences and is also a producer on the show, had little theatre experience before embarking on this project three years ago. But she had already been considering the power of immersive theatre as a means to affect social change. “The neurological impact of [immersive theatre like Sleep No More] has an effect on you that is similar to you experiencing something in real life,” Hall says.
Hall lost an uncle to HIV when she was a child, so awakening people to its ongoing prevalence felt like a personal mission. She hopes everyone who comes through the door at Joe’s Pub leaves feeling a similar sense of personal connection to the plight the play presents. “It’s absolutely critical to me that gay black men who come to the show feel that it is their story,” Hall says. “But it's also equally as important to me that white gay men come to the show and feel a deep, profound sense of empathy and responsibility. Because this is their community, too.” Hall hopes As Much As I Can inspires empathy in women, straight men, and everyone who experiences these men’s stories. “If you look at the decades of horrible policy around the epidemiological history of HIV and AIDS in this country, we all created the situation, and we need to come together as a community to stop it.”
The various settings in As Much As I Can reflect the title of ViiV’s original study, “Meet Me Where I Want to Be.” We find the characters at a drag bar and in church, in their bedrooms and clinic waiting rooms. An amalgamation of many men’s experiences, the play traverses territory that Moise and others like him may find achingly familiar — the shock and denial of a diagnosis, reluctance to tell friends and family or to be considered “sick,” an impulse to place blame. The cast also includes one of the men interviewed during the play’s conception, Jackson native James Watson, and others who’ve been with the project since its early stages.
During auditions, when Moise was called back to read a scene in which his character confronts the lover who may have infected him, the actor says it hit so close to home that he threw up all morning. “This is the first piece where I honestly feel like I'm bringing myself into the room,” Moise says. “I don't feel ashamed of allowing my personal experience to really affect what is going on in the play.” The aim of As Much As I Can aligns with Moise’s own as an advocate. “Hopefully what we'll do as a cast is introduce empathy back into the room,” he says, transforming the numbers and statistics everyone has read about into real human lives impacted by HIV.
As much as Moise and the team behind As Much As I Can hope to galvanize people into taking whatever actions they can to help, the play also serves another equally important purpose. “I hope that people watch this show and see black, queer gay men who are HIV-positive, thriving and who will live long lives,” he says. “The person I am today is because I'm queer and now because I'm positive. All of these different intersections in my life make me who I am.” The actor recognizes that being open and informed — and helping to inform others — can reduce shame and stigma, so that conversations can turn to prevention and, eventually, an end to the epidemic.
“How do you meet people where they are? How do you engage with people and gain their trust? I think it’s going to take a lot of work,” Moise says. But he’s ready to take it one day at a time. “Every day I wake up with a smile on my face. Nowadays, I do dance parties on my bed just to be like, Dude, you're fucking alive.”
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