These last days... A HIV victim lifts the curtain

RELATED: Singapore AIDS patient takes to the stage

HIS STORY BEGINS ON an almost banal note: a shopping expedition with friends. Then again, death often is ordinary. It's a tale of a man dying of AIDS and the trip is to buy a coffin. The narrator mimics the fuss over the selection, even trying the box for size. Paddy Chew, a former cabaret writer and first-time actor, is the star of the one-man production, Completely With/Out Character. It's his life, his story, after all. Chew, 39, is the only publicly identified AIDS victim in Singapore.

He got the idea for the play when local company The Necessary Stage approached him for material for another production on AIDS last year. Instead Chew suggested: "I'm the real McCoy, why don't you use me?" Several months of interviews led to a script, and the play began to take shape. Though no strangers to controversial subjects, the producers saw a special challenge in getting Singaporeans to pay to see AIDS on stage. Director Alvin Tan says many take the attitude, "Why should I care? I'm not HIV positive; I don't know anyone who is." For Chew, the play represents a chance to break the culture of silence and ignorance that surrounds the disease. Besides, "the theater has always been the first to come out in support of AIDS [issues]," says Chew, now an active volunteer with a local AIDS charity.

Character, which opened last week, is an invitation to share Chew's life: his selfishness at facing death, grief over dying friends and regret about failing to fulfill a promise to his now-deceased mother. The poignancy is leavened by moments of self-deprecating, sometimes camp, humor. But raw emotion is never far from the surface. This is a man baring his soul.

Midway, the lights come up. "Ask me anything," Chew urges his audience. One woman wants to know if he regrets any of his actions. The reply is teasing: "If you have none, you must have led a very boring life" More seriously, he adds: "Regrets are not a bad thing. It makes you wiser."

Chew and his theatrical partners are out to rouse discussion, and the question-and-answer format ensures it. As they point out, attitudes toward AIDS are still deeply mired in prejudice and misconception. A 1994 survey by the National University of Singapore, for instance, found that a quarter of respondents viewed AIDS as divine punishment for immoral behavior. About half considered it a "homosexual disease." Yet since 1992, infection among the city's heterosexual population has far outstripped that of homosexuals. In 1997, more than 70 percent of HIV cases were due to heterosexual contact.

To draw wider participation in the Q&A session, responses are simultaneously keyed in to a live Internet chatroom. The entire exchange is projected onto a screen at the back. Except for this concession to technology, the staging is simple and the set equally so. The play ends as simply: Chew strips to his shorts and raises his arms, allowing everyone to take in his emaciated frame before the house grows dark. Once a substantial 63 kilograms, Chew now barely tips the scales at 50 kg. It is a painful, moving performance. And taxing on the actor.

Chew is paying for his past ignorance. As an air steward, he had partied around the world for 13 years. AIDS was not part of his vocabulary until the late 1980s: "When I heard about it and started practicing safe sex, it might have been too late." He was diagnosed with HIV four years ago, and life changed overnight. Friends disappeared, relationships evaporated. His parents were dead. While his sisters were supportive, all were in Australia. Too ill to work, he quit his later job at the cabaret club, Boom Boom Room. He was bedridden and alone.

Yet the novice actor, who signed on for the play well before he "came out" about his condition at an AIDS conference in December, fights on. Many admire Chew's courage in shedding the cloak of anonymity. The praise, however, is hardly overwhelming. A columnist in Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao has attacked him as being a promiscuous bisexual. Others view him as a publicity-seeker. Chew shakes his head at that: "Who wants to be famous for having AIDS?" He concedes a number of people, especially in the older generation, regard taking his story on stage as an "extreme" action. But at least he's bringing the issue into the open. Besides, young people think it is terrific. "Now when they can talk about [AIDS], there is someone to refer to,'' Chew says. "I have given a face to this disease."