The artists who want to inject ‘anger, life force, joy, passion’ into the ’80s AIDS crisis

The first thing Jeremy Lloyd told his then-boyfriend when he found out he was HIV-positive 10 years ago was: “You can break up with me”. He hid the diagnosis from his parents for four years and equates telling people he has HIV to feeling as though he is “coming out again”.

“I would relate it to levels of self-worth,” Lloyd said. “And whether I was capable of loving myself and seeing myself as valid or worthy in multiple scopes – and that’s in the modern day 21st century.”

Lloyd, the movement director for the upcoming Sydney production of Jack Holden’s acclaimed play Cruise, a one-man show set in the 1980s at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, said the production had allowed him to connect his story to another narrative.

Cruise director Sean Landis said the “heart of the story” is a conversation between a young gay man who works for an LGBTQ+ helpline and an older queer man who lived through the heart of the AIDS crisis in Soho, London, who rings in.

“This older character, Mikey, sharing his story of coming of age in ’80s London … [he] is around for the introduction of house music to London, and how that really transformed the queer scene,” Landis said.

“The fact that it is a manageable health condition now doesn’t take away the carnage it has wreaked on the queer population, on gay men, on the world, and I think that with any historical tragedy is important that we honour and recognise it, and it’s not something that is widely talked about or taught in schools.”

The production returns to Sydney’s Seymour Centre and Melbourne’s Theatre Works in October after premiering in 2025. The latest iteration features 31 characters played by a single actor, Fraser Morrison, alongside a heightened score and reworked dance pieces.

Morrison said portraying that many characters can be “a bit overwhelming” but an exciting challenge – particularly when pushing forward queer stories about the AIDS crisis.

“I feel like sometimes there is a tendency with stories centred around the AIDS crisis to look at it with a reverence and a sadness that can be passive,” Morrison said.

“Our interest in coming back into it is how to push against that. It was such an activated time in history, and [there wasn’t] hindsight that we have now looking back at those stories … to inject anger, a life force, a joy, a passion.”

LGBTQ+ icon, Jonny Seymour, who consulted on the production, said he had seen his community evolve over his three-decade DJing career in Sydney and there were many parallel themes with the play.

“The culture [Cruise is] tapping into with the setting of the play and how it parallels with Sydney’s nighttime communities … it has a universal theme of caring for each other in nocturnal spaces that’s existed and still exists today.”

For movement director Lloyd, despite being diagnosed with HIV decades on from the AIDS crisis, the diagnosis continues to carry a pervasive stigma.

“Being openly HIV, for a lot of people they go like ‘You’re the first person that I know that’s just spoken about this so freely,’ … and I’m like, yeah, and I’m healthy, and I’m successful, and I’m in love, and I have prospects,” Lloyd said.

“This show that we do – there is such celebration. Like not to say that we don’t pull our punches … [but] we dance, and we love, and we celebrate … That’s the big thing that propels audiences to come back to this story and watch it.”

Cruise, Seymour Centre, October 9-31.