'We Laid Our Bodies Down' Commemorates World AIDS Day

On Sunday, November 29, Skylight Theatre Company and Moon Mile Run Productions present "We Laid Our Bodies Down," for World Aids Day at Skylight Theatre. Directed by Michael Kearns, the film vividly probes the immeasurable emotionality that continues to play out in the lives of LGBT individuals who grew up with the disease.

"AIDS is over. Ranging from magical thinking to obdurate denial, this three-word refrain is many things but QueerWise's 'We Laid Our Bodies Down' proves that AIDS is decidedly not over," said Kearns. "We've grown hoarse reciting the names. Like the deaths that mounted, year-in-and-year-out, so did the events; from the steps of County Hospital to the hallowed ground of Highways Performance Space, we did what many of us do best: put on a show, a show that we hoped would emphatically, maybe even miraculously, not let anyone die in vain."

Since the turn of the Century, Kearns has teamed with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS on a number of World AIDS Day events. World AIDS Day, designated 1 December every year since 1988, is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic and mourning those who have died of the disease. On December 1, World AIDS Day, Los Angeles County Board Supervisor Sheila Kuehl will be honoring Michael Kearns for his decades of AIDS-related artistic achievements.
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QueerWise is a group of GLBT writers and spoken word artists, 50+, who have been working under the tutelage of Michael Kearns for the past four years. The group of writer-performers made their theatrical debut in Late Awakenings at the Skylab (part of the Skylight Theatre Company's INKubator series in 2011). The collective has subsequently performed throughout the city of Los Angeles: Beyond Baroque, the Gay & Lesbian Center, and two years at Noho's Lit Crawl event.

This has been a banner year, beginning with QueerWise's annual Valentine's Day extravaganza, followed by Gay Pride performances at Wallspace Gallery and the Silver Lake Library. QueerWise was invited back to the library to perform in honor of GLBT Awareness Month in October and is presented, in part, by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Poets & Writers through a grant it has received from the James Irving Foundation.

This performance illuminating AIDS will include an excerpt from Tony Abatemarco's "Forever House," coming to the Skylight Theatre in January 2016.

"We Laid Our Bodies Down" is presented as part of Skylight Theatre Company's community service program, ARTS into ACTION, which is dedicated to outreach and social change beyond the theater's walls. It is funded in part by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Kearns has created a virtual library of artistic offerings that illuminate AIDS and its many permutations. His roots have been (and remain) in the theater where he added, throughout the '80s, a number of AIDS-related plays to his resume: "Dream Man" (actor), "Night Sweat" (director), "Life of the Party" (director), "I Wish I Had Never Met You And Was Meeting You Now" (actor), and "Jerker" (director, actor) among them.

He co-founded Artists Confronting AIDS with James Carroll Pickett in 1988 and remained its Artistic Director for a decade. ACA's mission was to give voice to those infected by the disease as well as those affected by the disease. Dozens of theatrical events were produced by ACA. Perhaps the most noteworthy and highly lauded was a carefully constructed trilogy: AIDS/US, AIDS/US II, and AIDS/US/WOMEN.

Again, partnered with Pickett, Kearns founded STAGE (Southland Theater Artists Goodwill Event), the longest running AIDS benefit in the United States, now in its thirty-second year. Kearns is author of numerous plays produced nationally and in Italy. Unrelenting in their authenticity, the plays include "Myron," "complications," Robert's "Memorial," and "Mijo." Collections of his monologues were anthologized in "T-Cells & Sympathy" (nominated for a Lambda Literary Award) and "Life Expectations," both published by Heinemann. His work, all of it AIDScentric, is included in numerous anthologies.

In 2012, his autobiography, "The Truth Is Bad Enough," prompted Sir Ian McKellen to say, "Hollywood's first openly gay actor... puts most other show-biz autobiographies to shame."

Kearns has received lifetime achievement awards from the Robert Chesley Foundation, STAGE, Playwright's Arena, the LA Weekly, and Celebration Theater, for his groundbreaking contributions as a playwright, noting the outpouring of theatrical pieces in which AIDS was the primary theme. In April (2015), the prolific writer premiered his latest full-length play, "Bang Bang" at Highways.

Skylight Theatre Company (Producer) discovers, develops and produces new, exhilarating works while nurturing and educating the writers who create them. A vibrant and expanding family of artists, giving voice to original perspectives of today's world, STC won four Ovation Awards in 2014 for "The Wrong Man" and "Pray To Ball" (the most of any intimate theatre in LA) while last year LA Weekly named their productions of "Years To The Day," "Open House" and "Sexsting" to their Top Ten Plays list of 2013. Skylight's first year as a company dedicated to developing new plays was 2011, their production of "Hermetically Sealed" made the LA Times annual list of Top Ten Plays, and "Mad Woman" moved from Los Angeles to La MaMa in New York. Since then plays developed by Skylight have played Chicago, New York, Edinburgh, Paris and local venues.

Moon Mile Run Productions (Producer) consists of three artists who each wear multiple hats -- including (but not limited to) director, actor, producer, playwright, singer, blogger, poet, teacher, dramaturg -- have thrown their chapeaus into the production ring to create Moon Mile Run. MMR dedicates itself to breaking artistic boundaries by telling stories that are conjured by the name of their newly formed company: Athletic. Quixotic. Romantic.

Since their successful production of "Bang Bang," MMR is making inroads on several projects; among them is Hyperion, a film written by Kearns, to be directed by Bringelson and star Shelton and Kearns. MMR teams with Skylight Theatre Company to produce and the premiere of David Trudell's solo piece, "Spirits, Anyone?"

Next year brings "Crazy Underneath The Trees," a hybrid form that mashes various manifestations of theater, created and performed by Darrell Larson and Rob Sullivan, two paragons of Los Angeles' theater scene, from the '70s to the present.