the happy hour
by Stephen Currens
World Premiere
ActOut production was in May 2011
Directed by J. Michael McCullough
Cast: Bob Campbell, Bill Chandler, John LaMar Cole, Paul Dick, G. Roni Garnett, Robert Parks Johnson, Matt Kelder, Max Reid, and Burley Thomas.
The Happy Hour focuses on Seth, a young gay man in New York who watches friends and lovers die around him as AIDS places its frightening grip on his community.
The play recounts the lengths men went to so they could practice "safe sex" — "which later became 'safer sex,' because there really is no safe sex," Says Writer, Stephen Currens — and rumors, fears, and false feelings of safety that permeated society at the time.
Also, the political climate in the country was one of alienation," he said. "It was shoving people aside and putting them in a category to keep them away from the mainstream when, in fact, they were people just like everybody else. That's what the play is about.
It's about what happens to a person when he loses his friend circle, his support mechanism, and what happens when that mechanism entirely fails."
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