On October 2013, I was in a Tony Award winning play called The Normal Heart, produced by the Cabaret Theatre on Douglass, which chronicled the rise of AIDS in New York City during the 1980s. I played Felix Turner, fashion editor of the New York Times who falls in love with the main character Ned– a controversial writer who organizes the first AIDS crisis center; their relationship representing light and hope in the midst of tragedy. When I started character crafting, I developed an intense connection with Felix because I saw him as the “dream version” of me. Everything he represented was what I aspire to be: a fashionable and influential editor at the New York Times, a man who is absolutely sure of himself and confident in the way life unfolds, and a natural source of adorning warmth and love.
In acting class, I learned that genuine acting is about being truthful and expressing that truth to the world. All my life I’ve wanted to show the world who I am and through Felix’s strength, I was commanded to open myself to raw honesty and live as the brave and loving character he embodies. His circumstances forced me to enter the deepest, most pure chambers of my psyche I never imagined I would share. Becoming Felix was an incredible, emotional challenge and at times overwhelming, because for too long I was insecure with my sexuality and not truthful about it to my family and myself. Though my sister and many dear friends watched me perform, I did not invite my parents because of my difficult history with their conservative, religious views concerning the closeted, impersonal me that they “know.” I doubt they could have handled seeing me fall in love with another man, contract AIDS, and die, although some part of me imagined them in the audience and wanted them there.
When Felix is diagnosed with AIDS, he says “I want my mother.” Dr. Brookner asks “where is she?” and he replies, “She’s dead. We never got along anyway.” This scene reflected my own relationship with my mother and evoked the immutable painful truths between us. One night, the performance was so personally potent that I broke down almost out of character, completely naked and exposed to the audience as both Felix and myself. I envisioned the shame I would have felt with revealing my sexuality to my mother through an HIV diagnosis, wondering now that I am finally being honest and despite what I did to get infected and with whom, would she love me now? Would she finally show me her love and protect and defend me, hold me, save me? I tried to picture what her face would look like and if she would touch me or if she would be too ashamed to face her gay son now infected with HIV– perhaps truly seeing me for the first time. In another scene, Felix explodes with rage and hopelessness at Ned after numerous failed treatments. For the final performance, my sister was in the audience and the tears poured as I imagined her walking into my actual apartment, seeing me on the floor the way I was: helpless, filthy, and dying of AIDS, wearing nothing but underwear, throwing sofa cushions at my lover and screaming blood and hell at the desolate diminishing of my closing life.
After every performance people came to me with eyes filled with light, love and tears. Their echoes of praise shot me into skies of euphoria, crowning me with praise of humbled gold, and I realized I had made an impact. I had the privilege of touching hearts and souls and conveying crucial messages of love night after night: that it transcends tragic circumstances and the hideous hopeless depths to where our psyches can dive, that the gay men during that period held the awe-inspiring strength of the world and that LGBT people can be just as strong today. On closing night my director gave me a letter that read: “I have watched you grow into this character and take risks to show yourself to everyone. Always remember that you are tremendously gifted and you can change the world with your gift.” For the first time in my life, I felt like gold. I felt the impact I made on others through the baring of my naked soul onstage; I was inspired by the LGBT community before me, the community of today, and anyone that does not understand the complex challenges of LGBT lives and the beautiful ways we overcome them.
Nikko Espina