This year’s Dublin Theatre Festival includes the debut of an unconventional Irish documentary-style play taken from hours of personal testimonies about living with HIV. Its writer, Shaun Dunne, talks to ACT UP Dublin’s Will St. Leger and Andrew Leavitt about inding an unexpected thirst to speak. Photo by Hazel Coonagh.

“I haven’t found any other process as emotional as this.” Shaun Dunne is talking about his new play, Rapids, which debuts at the Dublin Theatre Festival this month. An unconventional documentary theatre piece looking at instances of disclosure within the HIV community, Rapids was developed in collaboration with people living with HIV from a wide range of backgrounds.

“When you come and see the work, you go into it knowing that the material is derived from real experiences that we’ve translated into a new form for the theatre,” Dunne says. “What I’ve been doing over the past few years is finding people who have something that they want to see represented on the stage and I’ve been looking at how to formalise and stylise that truth. Nothing is made up, we’re there as conduits and representatives for people who don’t feel comfortable telling these stories themselves a lot of the time.”

Although this is his first work looking at HIV specifically, Dunne sees this as a natural progression from his earlier work. “I’ve kind of always been looking at – as theatre does more generally –disclosure as a theme. The first few pieces were about things that people wouldn’t necessarily talk about publicly too. Documentary inherently deals with disclosure, so this doesn’t feel like too much of a leap for me.”

Approaching the process of gathering the stories that are the basis for ‘Rapids,’ Dunne enlisted the help of his friend Robbie Lawlor, who is very open about living with HIV.

“I knew that I would need someone from within the community who could be a link and who would let people know who I am, that they’d be safe having a conversation with me,” he says. “Because it is risky – or people feel it’s risky – talking to a complete stranger about something you’re keeping secret.”

Despite concerns that it might be difficult to find people willing to talk, Dunne found that “people were very trusting.” And he found he didn’t have to ask a lot of questions. “Once you meet someone who’s willing to sit down in front of you, once they start talking they won’t stop talking. They will literally tell you absolutely everything about themselves, every single experience. I really appreciated that candour.

“There’s a thirst to speak, and that contradicts the general impression that people want to keep HIV hidden. People came to me saying, ‘this is what needs to be in the show, this is the insight I have, this is how you should represent it; this is what people are grappling with’.”

Dunne is very conscious of the need to present a candid and honest account of people’s stories, while not succumbing to the temptation to sensationalise or exaggerate the challenges that people with HIV face.

“A lot of the people who come forward are people who have had very bad things happen to them, and they want those bad things to be recognised. And I do believe that those things do need to be recognised, but you also want people to go home and be like ‘okay, life goes on – there’s hope in this too’. I don’t want to represent living with HIV as though it’s all doom and gloom because I know it’s not that.”

“We’re there as conduits and representatives for people who don’t feel comfortable telling these stories themselves.

Is he worried that people may shy away from a play about a taboo subject like HIV? Not at all. “It’s about secrets, and at a base level people are nosey and interested in other people’s business. People are interested in things that people don’t share publicly. So for that reason, I think people will be naturally drawn to the piece.”

Happily, in this case, it’s clear that people living with HIV are also eager to have their stories told and to see their lives reflected on stage.

If you are living with HIV and would like to contribute to a future version of Rapids, you can contact Shaun and Robbie at rapidstheatreshow@gmail.com.

‘Rapids’ runs from October 10 to 14, 7.45pm at Project Arts Centre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival (with an additional matinee on October 14 at 2:45pm. The October 11 show will include a post-show discussion with members of the company. ‘Rapids’ will also show on October 6 and 7 at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght.