Worthing: a hopeful, human vision of life with HIV in the 21st century

Offering a striking fusion of circus, dance and theatre created and directed by Sadiq Ali and produced by Turtle Key Arts, it invites audiences to confront stigma and celebrate resilience (February 6, Pavilion Theatre: https://wtm.uk/events/tell-me/)

Sadiq is a mixed-heritage, queer Muslim circus artist who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2014 during his first year at London Circus School. After being outed without his consent, he reclaimed control by becoming vocally open about his status, working with organisations like the Terrence Higgins Trust and earning the nickname "the face of AIDS" from friends.

This show, as he says, is the first time he has brought together his HIV activism and his performance-making/circus art.

His earlier show The Chosen Haram was about a gay Muslim man navigating identity and London's chemsex scene. Tell Me now centres on a woman receiving an HIV diagnosis across dual timelines (1980-84 and present day). Through Chinese Pole, it sees her navigate the HIV diagnosis in a world still shaped by prejudice, silence and misunderstanding. Along the way, the show looks at fears and dreams and the effect her diagnosis has on her relationships and on her own sense of self.

“For me it is all very easily controllable. By taking a tablet every day, I am fine and I really don't think any more about it. And I think that within the queer bubbles of Brighton and London and so on, it is very easy to forget about its existence. We have got so far ahead with the treatment but I think I was realising while touring that outside the big cities there is less understanding. The understanding is more akin to the 80s, and you get people thinking that I'm going to die when I speak to them.

“But what is interesting, I think, is that we are at a fork at the moment where one fork means the future might become more like the past. We are removing funding from essential care and that lit a fire under my bum. How far we have come is just amazing. We're at a point where we really get to control it a lot but there is a potential future which like looks more like the past that we had… and that is very worrying.

“With this show that has been made, rather than the show that I expected to make, we have made something that is a beautiful journey between past and present. We have two characters that are able to communicate non-verbally from 1985 to 2026. They are both in their own time periods, and the female is able to come to terms with the diagnosis and realise that she's OK. She is the person in the present.

“It is just a really human show that allows people to see a really raw queerness on stage and allows people to be hopeful. And I'm told that it is making lots of people cry and think about things which is lovely. I just want people to take a beat and be together and have a lovely entertaining evening.”