Covid-19 prejudice akin to 1980s Aids panic, say creators of Diana play - The Guardian

The prejudice that has affected some communities during the Covid-19 pandemic is akin to that faced by gay men at the height of the Aids crisis, according to the creators of a play about Diana, Princess of Wales’s visit to the UK’s first Aids ward.

The playwright Bren Gosling and producer Paul Coleman were young, gay men living in London in the 1980s and their play, Moment of Grace, goes back to that era, following the lives of three fictional characters who are affected by the royal’s opening of the Broderip ward at Middlesex hospital in April 1987.

Coleman said there were parallels between how people with the two illnesses have been treated, with phrases such as “super-spreaders” echoing the “patient zero” tag that was wrongly attributed to a flight attendant thought to be responsible for introducing the disease to the US.

“I think the way we reacted when Covid-19 came along does bear a lot of similarities,” said Coleman. “There’s the way people said ‘it comes from China’ – that was like back then when people would say ‘OK, it came from America’ or ‘it came from San Francisco’, as if that had anything to do with it.”

The play’s director, Nicky Allpress, who was 19 at the time of Diana’s visit, said the event had caused a seismic shift in perceptions. “Whether you were a Diana fan or not, that was a really incredible gesture and it had this message that rippled internationally,” she said.

Gosling added: “Those images shot around the world and started a shift in perception towards people who suffer from this disease.”

The play was originally supposed to be staged this summer at the Tristan Bates theatre in the West End to coincide with Pride, but because of lockdown it became the latest film-theatre hybrid, with actors directed remotely using equipment that was couriered to them and sanitised before and after use.

It focuses on a patient on the ward, a nurse and a fireman from Essex who espouses some of the mainstream views about Aids at the time, such as the idea that it only affected gay men.

In the build-up to Diana’s visit, the press attention focused on whether or not the princess would wear protective equipment. In 1987 there was still a huge stigma around the disease and ignorance about how it could be spread, so the images of one of the most famous women in the world shaking hands with HIV- positive patients broke down boundaries, according to Coleman. “When Diana shook hands with the patients, it changed the whole perception around what it was to be gay or straight and be HIV-positive.”

Although Coleman sees similarities between Covid-19 and Aids in terms of media coverage, he said the difference in response highlighted how gay life was seen as expendable in 1980s. “Look what happened when Covid-19 hit: the whole world ceased up because it affected everyone. But back then, in the 80s, it was a case of ‘oh, it just affects gay men, we’ll let it go on,’” he said.

“Think of how many thousands of people had died by the time we did something, and that only happened because by then it was obvious it could affect the heterosexual population. Up to that point we were disposable.”

The play will stream later this summer; details will be on its Twitter account.