TERRIFIED: Playwright Matthew, left, had a frightening introduction to gay life, while Andrew Burnap plays a writer with no first-hand knowledge of the Aids crisis
PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON ANNAND
THEATRE
Playwright Matthew Lopez’s first lessons about being gay were grim ones. “My introduction was as a 10-yearold boy in the American South, watching the news and learning about the Aids epidemic,” he says. “That’s how I discovered what being gay was; by simultaneously being taught that it also meant dying of HIV/Aids.”