Marching in Gucci: Memoirs of a Well-Dressed Black AIDS Activist
A Multi-Media Solo Performance by Chad Goller-Sojourner
In Partnership with Langston, Gay City & 4- Culture
June 21, 22 & 23, 2018 PRIDE WEEKEND

Set in NYC during the height of the AIDS Crisis, Marching in Gucci: Memoirs of a Well-Dressed Black AIDS Activist, is a Multimedia Solo Performance, that explores the paradoxical and precarious relationship between fighting AIDS while simultaneously engaging in multiple self-harming behaviors.

Despite being on the front lines of the activist movement, and AIDS epidemic impacting gay Black men at a disproportional rate. We believe this to be the first theatrical and one of few public narratives exploring the AIDS crisis through the lens of a gay Black AIDS activist.

I moved to New York City in the fall of 1992. The next few years would be the AIDS epidemic‘s most deadly. AIDS became the leading cause of death among persons 25 to 44 years old and eighth overall in the nation. In my second year, AIDS took the lives of 40,000 U.S. residents and accounted for 23% of all U.S. deaths among men and 32% of all deaths among African American men. During year three, AIDS deaths reached an all-time high of 50,000. Only eight thousand less than the number of American casualties lost during the twenty-year Vietnam War. A disproportionate number those who died were Black and artists. The fact That I am still here has never been lost on me.

Chad Goller-Sojourner is a Seattle-based writer, solo-performer, and recipient of a distinguished Washington State Arts Commission Performing Arts Fellowship. His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and featured on NPR. In 2013 he debuted his sophomore solo show: Riding in Cars with Black People & Other Newly Dangerous Acts: A Memoir in Vanishing Whiteness. It showcases The groundbreaking, and crushingly honest story of what happens when a black boy, raised by white parents, “ages out” of honorary white, and suburban privilege and into a world where folklore, statistics, and conjecture deem him dangerous until proven otherwise. His inaugural solo show, Sitting in Circles with Rich White Girls: Memoirs of a Bulimic Black Boy, debuted July 2008 and chronicles the performer’s life-long affair with the scale and ten-plus year liaison with an eating disorder.

Tickets: $20.00 General $15 Students
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3432521
4 Performances: Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, Seattle
Thursday, June 21st Doors 7 pm, Show 7:30 pm
Friday 22nd, Doors 7 pm, Show 7:30 pm
Saturday 23rd, Doors 3 pm, Show 3:30 pm & Doors 7:00 pm, Show 7:30 pm

https://www.facebook.com/events/403026820101080/