Mitchell Butel is flat out in the middle of rehearsals and his mind is overloaded with flashbacks to the 1980s and the killer disease that took his friends and terrified the world.
He was a teenager when HIV/AIDS emerged in the US and other countries, including Australia.
The virus devastated the arts sector.
"Hearing of people working in the theatre community who had contracted the virus was alarming and certainly a few friends of mine passed away in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which of course was very traumatic," Butel remembered.
"Particularly in America, a whole generation of playwrights and directors and actors and choreographers [was] just wiped out by AIDS — the loss of so much."
Now, as artistic director of State Theatre Company South Australia, Butel is staging the Tony Award-winning production The Normal Heart, which is set in New York at the heart of the crisis in the 1980s.
The boss does not normally tread the boards, but the 52-year-old is ideally placed to help tell the story on stage of a virus that to date has killed more than 40 million people worldwide.
"When you are coming out, it's a difficult, difficult time, so that plus the spectre of HIV/AIDS as well — they're big issues to deal with when you're a teenager," he recounted of his own experiences.
Tough time growing up during crisis
Butel had a happy childhood upbringing but felt shame and self-hatred as he experienced immense homophobia at school, on the streets and in his professional acting life.
Put AIDS on top of that and his days as a young adult were tough.
"The notion of the beginning of a sexual life could very quickly lead to your death, that's pretty full on for any teenager, I think," he said.
The cast for the production is predominantly gay, which is unusual in Australian theatre, which only irregularly stages productions about homosexuality.
Being cast never felt so right for Melbourne-based actor Evan Lever, who was born in 1987 at the height of the AIDS crisis.
"I feel very connected to that part of history because I think what those people did affected me and my life in ways that I don't even know or wasn't aware of as a child," he said.
He, too, grew up in a society where being gay was frowned upon and hidden.
"When you're born gay, you're kind of born with this secret that you don't wear on the outside and you don't share with anyone around you," he said.
"You learn to perform heterosexuality and that becomes a bit of a trap, becomes a bit of a cage."
New viruses creating issues
The State Theatre Company's production comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic may be lessening but the world is still also dealing with monkeypox.
The company invited a doctor from the Royal Adelaide Hospital to talk to the cast and she pointed out the clear difference in dealing with the monkeypox virus compared with the mass hysteria over AIDS.
"She said it's interesting, the labels around monkeypox — the government's been very quick to say this is not a gay problem, it's, you know, men who have sex with men, which is very different to someone who lives an openly gay life," Butel said.
"Whereas HIV/AIDS was very much targeted as 'oh, a gay problem, it's someone else's problem' in the 1980s.
"America was so bad, Reagan didn't mention the word — the epidemic began in 1981, but he didn't mention the word AIDS until 1985," he recalled.
The Normal Heart is a thriller with a tinge of humour thrown in.
But Butel warned it was also a love story, with plenty of betrayal, fury and tenderness and was not for the faint-hearted.
"I think even for a straight audience, this will be really quite confronting, because it's quite full-on," he said.
"It's kind of a discussion of sexuality and there might be a few fans going in some of the more racier bits.
"I think that's why people go to the theatre, because they're interested in seeing lives other than their own, walking in other people's shoes, ultimately."
The Normal Heart opens at Adelaide's Dunstan Playhouse on September 30.
