Andrew Keates is a multi-award-winning theatre director whose work includes William Hoffman’s AIDS play As Is, the European première of Dessa Rose starring Cynthia Erivo and, in 2019, Michael Dennis’s play, Dark Sublime. In 2018 the Vice Chancellor of Surrey University awarded him a Young Achiever of the Year Award, in recognition not only of his success in the theatre, but also of his work raising awareness of HIV and those from under-represented backgrounds. In 2013, after seeing HIV infection rates in London soar, he decided to direct a revival of Hoffman’s As Is, honouring all those who were lost to the AIDS pandemic while raising awareness about HIV.

I t never occurred to me for a moment that I was anything but negative. I sat in a room at the sexual health clinic, flirting and joking with a very attractive nurse, who took a small prick of blood from my finger and popped it into a little pot. Then he went quiet. 

I saw his expression and said, “It’s not positive, is it?” 

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It is, mate, and we’re going to look after you.” I don’t remember much about what happened next. I was in intense shock. In that moment my only thought as I reeled out onto the street was who do I tell? Whom can I ask for help? How can I phone my mum and tell her this, the one thing she was frightened of when I told her I was gay? 

I was referred to a clinic at St Thomas’s Hospital. I sat looking round the waiting room which was full of people: a mother with a baby, screaming its head off, a smart man in a grey suit, some old queens in their leather and plenty of young people. I longed to have some simple STD like chlamydia or gonorrhoea, which I presumed was what most of them had, waiting to be diagnosed. 

When I went in to see the nurse, he quickly disabused me. “We don’t do sexual screening in this clinic,” he said. “Every single person in that waiting room is HIV positive.” At that moment I felt a little less alone. I understood I had a virus that affects all generations, all genders, all colours, all creeds. That in any carriage on a tube train in London, as that nurse explained, you are guaranteed not to be the only person with HIV. But what people need to realise is that it’s not those who know they are HIV+ that are passing the virus on. Anyone on effective medication has undetectable amounts of virus which cannot be passed on. It’s the people who don’t know, who may well be laughing the loudest and pointing the finger at others, who could be passing it on themselves.

 

Young people often downgrade the risk of AIDS and HIV because they imagine you take a pill and everything’s fine. But that’s not always the case. 

In the first six months on medication – in my case it was Atripla – I lost two stone in weight. The days were like walking through cotton wool and the nights brought chronic insomnia, hallucinations and the worst night terrors you can imagine. My brain felt on fire. Every other day I had to change my sheets because either they were saturated in sweat or my bowels had relaxed. I accepted this state of affairs because I didn’t realise there were other drugs out there, but fortunately my doctor took one look at me months later and realised I needed to change regime. That one wasn’t ideal either, but eventually we arrived at the point of me being able to take a single pill every day that keeps my viral count undetectable and gives me a strong CD4 (T-cell count) reading so I know my immune system is relatively strong. Of course, no one can say how fine I will be in later years. The medication controls the virus, but it is not a cure. 

I was tempted to keep the fact I was positive secret, because I feared the way others would treat me. But my mum had always brought me up to own who I am and be proud of it. I was already working with a charity in the theatre called the Make A Difference Trust, which builds awareness of HIV and AIDS and raises money for projects all over the world. They were holding an event at the Dominion Theatre in the West End, and I volunteered to go on stage and come out as being HIV+ to inspire others to get tested. Since that day I’ve been messaged by hundreds, thousands of people who have been afraid to reveal their status, thanking me for being open. It sounds strange, but in many ways being HIV+ is the best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me a purpose and a reason to live. The biggest obstacle for people with HIV isn’t the virus. It’s what everyone around them is saying and thinking. 

And we have to change that because it denies them the most incredible experience, which is to fall in love and be with someone. Couples who once would have been separated through death are now separated through prejudice. The message we have to get across is that with today’s HIV medication and viral load testing – not to mention PrEP – undetectable HIV equals untransmissible HIV, and serodiscordant couples can keep themselves safe and still enjoy sex. I know now I can still love and be loved, and that is the most precious gift in life.