‘The press/supress/our stories of happiness/they choose to define Us/As “suffering headliners”’: Theatre-making with women living with HIV

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe an innovative interdisciplinary collaboration between theatre practitioners, clinical researchers and a community-based organisation, all working in equal partnership, to explore the intersecting experiences of womanhood and HIV. Drawing upon the work of Gayatri Spivak, Mikhail Bakhtin, Alison Jeffers and Beatrice Allegranti, we examine three key themes: the importance of self-representation, the impact of creating different spaces, and the centrality of reciprocity. Underpinning our work, is the desire to work in partnership with women living with HIV to challenge existing hegemonic narratives of what it is to live with HIV in the UK in the twenty-first century.