Twinbiz in association with Theatre of The Riverside Church, is pleased to present What Would Jesus Do? a new play about HIV/AIDS and the African American community set in the black church, written and directed by grant-winning Harlem playwright, Yvette Heyliger.

Performances in observance of World AIDS Day 2005 are on Friday, December 2nd & Saturday, December 3rd at 7:30pm at Theatre of The Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Street (and West 120th Street), New York, NY. Tickets are $15.00. You may contact the box office at 212-870-6784. Saturday’s performance will be followed by a reception hosted by The Riverside HIV/AIDS Task Force.

What Would Jesus Do? is a faith-based, intergenerational play about a wife and mother whose exposure to HIV reveals devastating secrets about home and church which inspire her to take action when she asks What Would Jesus Do?

The play challenges the faith and general communities to do more to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic, starting with our places of worship and our black theatres.

This presentation is made possible in part by The Fund for Creative Communities/New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and fiscally sponsored by Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI). This grant represents a new partnership between a community based organization and a playwright in the fight to combat HIV/AIDS by proving a fresh approach to education and prevention through the use of theatre!

When Heyliger (who you may see from time to time as “Aunt Sarah” in the reruns of the NBC hit, Cosby Show) was searching for subject matter on which to write a new play, she met with the late Tunde Samuel, former Producer/Director of Theatre Arts at the National Black Theatre, NY. That is when she learned of his deep concern about the HIV/AIDS crisis in black communities.

Heyliger recounts, “Tunde said we didn’t need to go to Africa or India to find staggering statistics on HIV/AIDS, we only needed to look right in our own back yard. He expressed his disappointment that black theatre had not done enough to address this epidemic, and his wish was that every black theatre produce at least one play a season to educate the community and fight the astounding and steadily growing infection rate.”

A week later, Samuel passed on due to unrelated health issues, but Heyliger did not pass on the challenge he presented to her. She had a deep feeling that through Samuel, God had called upon her to use her gifts and talents as an artist to combat this epidemic. Heyliger was awarded a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts/Individual Artist Program to write the play and later was awarded a re-grant to continue her work by the Harlem Arts Alliance/Rockefeller Foundation. Since that time Heyliger has presented excerpts from the play in churches, prisons and colleges, including HIV professionals and peer educators as part of the presentation.

“HIV is the black community’s own Hurricane Katrina,” said Heyliger. “This virus has behaved like a hurricane, leaving devastating numbers of our people infected in its wake. Yet, we do have the means to be safe prevention. That is why I am doing my part as a playwright to spread the message of prevention through the use of theatre.”

This past summer, Larry Leon Hamlin’s National Black Theatre Festival 2005 in Winston-Salem, NC in association with Twinbiz, presented a special celebrity reading of What Would Jesus Do? This unprecedented opportunity for HIV prevention and education on a national stage was a testament to the role Black Theatre can play in arresting this epidemic.

With: Yvonne Farrow, Tom Martin, J. Bernard Calloway, Lauren Richardson Jordan, Marvel Allen, Patt Franklin, Michael Willis, Tom Southern, Pamela Monroe, Gheree O'Bannon, Joan Green, Jasmine Adams, Sean Pritchard and Larry Farrow (Minister of Music).