London Performance Studios is pleased to share ‘Play Circle’, a new series of workshops centred around script-in-hand readings by The AIDS Plays Project.
This new format creates a unique shared experience between stage and spectators, where the cast, seated amongst the audience, will encounter the text for the first time. After the reading, participants are invited to join a lively discussion about the play and its writer, with light refreshments available throughout the evening.
For the first Play Circle, audiences will experience a first, unstaged reading of Milo Lookingale - a frank and furious dispatch from the early years of the epidemic, written and originally performed by Jim Jewell in 1992. The semi-autobiographical text was recently rediscovered by a group of performers and queer activists in Oregon, USA.
Every day, more bad news. In his poky flat, Milo flits between videotapes of his favourite TV quiz shows and his collection of obituaries for dead friends and lovers, carefully cut out and saved. Over the course of seventy-five minutes, Jim Jewell sketches an unbearably moving portrait of an ordinary man asking himself: why have I been spared?
For one night only, it is read by acclaimed theatre artist and performer Dickie Beau.
Cast
Dickie Beau
Creative Team
Director: Alastair Curtis Producers: David Doyle, Alastair Curtis Designers: Tom Joyes, Fran Ortega
Studio 3, London Performance Studios For more info on how to get to London Performance Studios, click here
18/09
About
Alastair Curtis (he/him) is a writer, director and founder of The AIDS Plays Project. His writing has been published in Frieze, AnOther, The Economist, Prospect and The Observer amongst others. Sweetheart, his debut short film, premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2025.
Dickie Beau works broadly as a theatre-maker, actor, and writer, and is perhaps best known for his unique long-form lip-sync shows, the most recent of which, SHOWMANISM, had its successful run at Hampstead Theatre extended earlier this summer. At the start of 2025, Dickie played Oscar Wilde on stage in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, opposite Simon Russell Beale as A.E. Housman (also at Hampstead Theatre). Recent screen appearances include playing Peter in What it Feels Like For a Girl (BBC) and Danny in The Gold (BBC). Other credits include: Michael in AIDS: The Unheard Tapes (BBC), The Shredder in The Sandman (Netflix), and Kenny Everett in Bohemian Rhapsody. Dickie is an Associate Research Fellow at Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, and has been the recipient of several awards including The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, Best Supporting Actor in the Off West End Theatre Awards, and Best Alternative performer in the London Cabaret Awards.
Jim Jewell was a writer, performer, and teacher from Indiana. He acted in and directed dozens of shows for Stage 212, a community theatre in the Illinois Valley, and edited the organisation’s newsletter for 17 years. ‘Milo Lookingale’ premiered in 1992 with Jewell in the title role, before touring to Indiana and New York, where it was filmed for television. He passed away in 1994 at age 49 from HIV/AIDS-related illnesses.
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