Play 'Cruise' brings the memory of the 1980s AIDS epidemic to Teatro Ruth Escobar
Monologue by Briton Jack Holden, staged by Igor Cosso, opens in São Paulo on Saturday after a run in Rio.
Translated from the Portuguese original by the Panorama newsroom. Read in Portuguese
Summary written by the Panorama newsroom from the sources listed below. Facts are attributed to the original publications.
Actor Igor Cosso, 35, opens the play "Cruise – Minha Última Noite na Terra" (My Last Night on Earth) in São Paulo next Saturday, at Teatro Ruth Escobar, according to a Folha de S.Paulo report from November 2. The show comes from a run on Rio stages.
The production is directed by Orlando Caldeira and translated by Rodrigo Nogueira. The text is by Briton Jack Holden, and the actor says he learned of the play at a moment of discouragement with his career, right after leaving television. Reading the text moved him so much that he cried in the kitchen at home.
To secure the rights, Cosso went through what he calls an odyssey: he had to send his entire professional history to the author's agent before receiving authorization to stage the work in Brazil.
The plot reconstructs the night when Jack, a volunteer at a helpline serving the LGBTQIA+ community, takes a call from Michael Spencer. Diagnosed with AIDS and with a life expectancy of only four years, Michael decides to spend his savings on the night of February 29, 1988, in London's Soho neighborhood.
The mystery of the text lies in the following morning: the body holds on, the sun rises and the character has to deal with the idea of staying alive.