Expanding the definition: Beirut (1993), U.S. drama, and the performance of HIV/AIDS in Spain

This paper analyzes the Spanish staging of Beirut (1993), a production that combined Alan Bowne’s Beirut (1987) and Lanford Wilson’s A Poster of the Cosmos (1988) into a single show to articulate a countercultural response to prevalent misconceptions about HIV/AIDS. Founded on an original archival work, the paper examines this staging against its particular historical-social backdrop, the AIDS crisis. In so doing, it reads the production as a performative intervention that, partaking in the wave of artistic-activist interest that surged in Spain during the 1990s, tried to problematize (then) widespread misassumptions by exposing onstage non-homonormative bodies and experiences associated with HIV/AIDS. Ultimately, thus, this paper presents Beirut as a pioneering staging, which, although both confined to non-commercial circuits and burdened by a flawed narrative, stands as the first production that both explored HIV/AIDS beyond the gay community in Spain and contested the long-established equation between the epidemic and male homosexuality.