IN THE CONTINUUM GOODMAN THEATRE
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Compared to their early theatrical counterparts, black women with AIDS have been nearly invisible onstage, but In the Continuum, written and performed by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, places them center stage. Well received off-Broadway in late 2005, it’s now being given its local premiere–with Robert O’Hara’s original deft staging–at the Goodman. The show loosely ties together the experiences of two women in different countries who both find out they’re pregnant and have HIV. Gurira, a native Zimbabwean, plays Abigail, a news anchor with Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation who has a seven-year-old son and a handsome husband. Salter is 19-year-old Nia, a sometime poet from South Central Los Angeles with a troubled home life. Estranged from her mother, she’s just lost her job at Nordstrom after taking too many “five-fingered discounts.” She hopes to find a way out of her marginal life through her boyfriend of “ten months and three weeks,” Darnell, a high school basketball star being heavily recruited by top universities.
Once Nia and Abigail are diagnosed, their voices tend to fade from the stories in a stylistic move that symbolizes the invisibility of women with HIV. The latter half of the play focuses on the people each woman encounters, most of whom are unaware of their plight. Hitchhiking home from the clinic, Abigail runs into Petronella, a high school classmate, who compares the ineffectiveness and expense of AIDS drugs to cures by a “witchdoctor–sorry–traditional healer.” Though Petronella is disdainful of Africans’ dependence on Western aid, she’s clearly chuffed by working for DATA, Bono’s do-gooder organization, and can’t remember how to say good-bye in Shona, her native tongue. This scene is intercut with one in which Nia’s probation officer recites Oprah-isms to her: “Don’t let yesterday’s bad choices keep you from making good choices today,” she chirps, unaware that Nia’s one irrevocable bad choice has cost her the future she was counting on.
