‘Before It Hits Home:’ When HIV Was A Whisper, Cheryl L. West’s Play Was Considered Taboo. She Sounded The Alarm Anyway.

“Before It Hits Home” Arena Stage, Washington D.C. (1991 via cheryllwest.com)

“That woman left her son.” I was haunted and pleasantly surprised by those words from my mother. I’d emerged from a week of work doing technical production on a virtual presentation of the play “Before It Hits Home." CNP partnered with Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company and Georgia Equality to produce a virtual reading in honor of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2021. I was working non-stop in my home office and decided, on show day, I’d load the broadcast downstairs for my mother to watch. Unsure if she would, I gave her the offer, and to my surprise, she watched. More than that, though, I was struck by how the play resonated with her.

This year, in recognition of the 40th anniversary of HIV, we are honoring the 30th anniversary of Cheryl L. West’s "Before It Hits Home." The play was the first Off-Broadway show about the Black family and the impact of HIV. 

I spoke to playwright Cheryl L. West and Jamil Jude, Artistic Director of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre, for a wide-ranging conversation, including their thoughts on why theater is effective in reducing HIV stigma and why West was overcome with emotion after watching CNP’s virtual reading of her play.

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Cheryl L. West (Photographer: Abe Booker III)

The Reckoning: CNP, along with True Colors presented a virtual reading of your play back in February. How did it feel to see your work presented 30 years after its premiere?

West: I can't tell you what that did for me. And my own people too, you know? I mean, they pulled it off. I hadn't seen the play in at least 25 years, probably. The last time was in New York, and New York was not kind to that play at all. I just kind of never knew much else about it. I get my royalties, and I [know] it's being taught in colleges, but then to revisit it, in that way, with that caliber of actors. I thought the direction was wonderful and all the conversations around it just brought it back. I had such urgency when I wrote it, you know? What it meant to me. Because once you get crushed by critics, you just think, well, ‘maybe I just didn't get it.’

To see it reenacted again, at such a high-caliber, and to see the appreciation for it was really amazing. People think that once you get to a certain level in your career that you feel you don't need that anymore. And when somebody gifts you, it’s sort of like, okay, this is why this meant something to people because it meant something to me as it was being written. I will always remember that. That was a highlight of my career.

The Reckoning: Jamil, as a director of a theater company, hearing Cheryl just describe that feeling. What does that bring up for you in your role? 

Jude: It has been a tough emotional week. I have been on the verge of tears all week, so I'm saying if it happens right now, just know that this is fueled by this moment and all the other things that have happened.

What does it bring up for me? I think it's the reason why I'm an artistic director. I talk about when I started my career...this idea was embedded in my head that I wanted to run a culturally relevant theater company and I worked hard to try to figure out what all of those words mean. What does it mean to run an organization? What does culturally relevant mean? So just hearing a playwright speak to; I birthed this thing in the world, and initially, it meant so much to so many people, but [it] has had its own life in the world. There were times when it wasn't received in the way in which I birthed it and that hurt. To play a role in trying to connect those dots to where an artist comes back, and connects [them] right back to [their] originating impulse. Hearing Cheryl West talk about it being one of the highlights of her career, I don't know how that isn't now one of the highlights of my career. 

The Reckoning: How can Black theater be effective when we talk about combating HIV stigma and sharing information about HIV?

West: Well, I'll tell you. “Before It Hits Home” was produced by Second Stage and happened at The Public [Theater]. My director at the time said to me, I don't think gay white men liked your play. And then I thought, I didn't know I was supposed to have them like it, but, you know, they controlled everything in New York. At that point “As Is” and “The Normal Heart” were happening, and they were highly political, and they felt like my play wasn't political. It wasn't angry. But see, I wasn't writing it for them.

They were at a different place than [Black people]. When I first started writing it, I said, if that thing ever hits home, we’re not going to be ready, because we're so far behind. Where the political structures were already being set up in the gay white community, but we weren't [set up]. The way to get the attention, I felt like AIDS needed to go through the family because that we understand. I kept thinking when it hits our family, are we going to be ready? Cause it's gonna come. I could see it. 

And people at that point thought that I was so wrong to even use AIDS and Black in the same sentence. I remember there was somebody from the Urban League that said Cheryl should be ashamed to use AIDS and Black in the same sentence. So that's where we were. That was that climate. And I think Black people understand family. We understand how it affects our units. Is your family built on a foundation of concrete where it's immobile and doesn't shift when things come to it? Is it built on sand, so as soon as it's attacked it just sort of dissolves? How do we build our family? How accepting, how strong is that family and can it withstand HIV and AIDS? 

And so I knew if I put a family on stage and had them deal with where we were and deal with religion and shame and all of those kinds of things, that was the way to first get the attention that I needed [to prove] that it was happening to us.

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Jamil Jude (Photographer: Lelund Durond Thompson)

Jude: I believe that theater is intended to increase our capacity for empathy. We gather communally at the same time to enjoy a ritual. A ritual throughout human existence has been intended as something that you pass down, and at the end of it, you are changed in some type of way. I think that’s the “why” for me on theater. 

I think what's specific about this is that Cheryl mentioned it 30 years ago, but even now, I think it is due to organizations like Counter Narrative Project, it is less of a taboo thing, but it still feels like a bad word to talk about HIV and AIDS in the Black community.

There is a lot of education that's happening, but we have to find ways to reduce stigma so that people don't feel alone.

The Reckoning: When thinking about the 30th anniversary of “Before It Hits Home," what are your hopes for the future of this work?

West: I hope that this piece of work continues and that people will look at it and see that point in time. How have we grown? I hope that as the years go by, people will look at the Bailey’s and say my family would respond differently and maybe even better. I hope that this work will always remind us that we have loved, and that love will sustain us, and will stretch our hearts to understand that which seems foreign to us. 

So when our children come home and they have new pronouns, a new way of looking, a new way of dressing, a new way of talking, a new way of everything; before we judge, before we move, before we push away, we take a minute to say, how am I being loving in this moment? How am I connecting before I correct? 

Jude: My hopes are, and I don't know how much of it has changed since becoming a father. I think some of it is just maturing as a person. But I think about plays like "Before It Hits Home" and just the ongoing conversations, I think as Black people, we recognize that we are also part of the cultural zeitgeist that is happening and that we're not excluded from that.

Regardless of our cultural traditions, these issues that affect the world also affect Black communities. We have to continue to learn how to have these conversations. I think for so many heterosexual Black men, Dwayne Wade, and the way that he's loving his children is changing our relationship to how we understand our role as fathers.

Not to force them into a specific role that we have ordained for them, but to listen to them say, here's how I'm showing up in the world and it may change, but I need you to learn to love me and accept that. 

I think about the power of theater in that. Before it is on your doorstep, what can you do to better show up for other people that you don't know? Your empathy, your concern, your understanding can be a benefit to somebody now, as opposed to, in the moments of crisis that we find our characters in this piece.