In DOWN IN THE MOUTH, I created an ensemble of characters, each representing an aspect of the archaeology of the AIDS pandemic. These were the darkest of days, and I felt I had a mission to explore my place in the world as part of a “high risk group”.

My cast included characters named Rage, a French revolutionary everywoman in tattered eighteenth-century garb, the instigator and activist; Tally, an accountant and bureaucrat, the recorder of the death toll; Grapple, an Einstein-like man representing science and its attempts to deal; Tea, an apathetic, well-off woman, untouched by and decidedly unaware of the plague; Sympathy, her lunch pal; and Forge, a man afflicted, struggling with the plague.

After a series of individual scenes and isolating interactions, the characters join in a group lip-synch the famous sextet from the live 1955 Maria Callas/Von Karajan recording of Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor. At the end of the singing, to the roar of the canned applause, the six of us held hands, ran downstage and stood in a line, confronting the audience, our mouths open in the shape of the final note, jerking and shaking our bodies in a kundalini yoga manner. This movement continued in the subsequent dead silence, with this human rope-like life-line, still vibrating in fear, in rage, in all our conflicted emotions, as the great curtain of Alice Tully Hall closed very slowly.

Story, choreography, direction and costume design by John Kelly; music by Gaetano Donizetti and Arvo Part; set design by Huck Snyder; lighting design by Stan Pressner; wigs by Danilo. Produced by John Kelly & Company, Liz Dunn for John Kelly Performance and the Serious Fun! Festival. Premiere: Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, NY, August 1, 1990. WITH: John Beal (Grapple); Kyle de Camp (Rage); John Kelly (Forge); Marleen Menard (Sympathy); Byron Suber (Tally); and Vivian Trimble (Tea).