Jade Esteban Estrada Returns to The Lou, Feb. 16 in New One-Man-Show

BY: COLIN MURPHY – SENIOR WRITER

    St. Louis audiences are no strangers to the many talents of Jade Esteban Estrada. Over the past decade the out and proud showman has delighted us at Pridefest and engaged us with his Icons (The Lesbian and Gay History of the World) trilogy.

    Estrada wears many creative hats—he is actor, dancer, singer, director, playwright, author, teacher and comedian. Indeed, with a love for queer history and an even greater love for his craft, Estrada is the modern American Renaissance man.

    On Feb. 16, the "Master Entertainer" brings his latest offering, A Lullaby for Ryan: The History of HIV/AIDS in America to The Urban Eats Café (3301 Meramec). The musical comedy is produced by Jerry Rabushka's Ragged Blade Productions and introduces us to Boobs (a.k.a. the Bubonic Plague); Jimmy, a real estate agent in New York City in 1981; Rock Hudson; Miss Protease Inhibitor 1996; Bill McPhil, a 53-year-old HIV-positive cowboy and LaShonda, an African-American mother of three in Chicago’s Southside as they chronicle the last quarter-century of the AIDS epidemic in the United States with stories of courage, strength and human triumph.

    Vital VOICE magazine recently caught up with Estrada via telephone to discuss Lullaby, its many characters, and why he was compelled to pen a comedy about HIV/AIDS.

Jade Esteban Estrada: I am and I’m really excited about it. I love the show, I really love the show. It’s a musical comedy and it’s a lot of laughs. And a lot of people wonder at first how can a show about HIV/AIDS be funny—they’ve got to see the show. A lot of people who have survived this epidemic have tapped into the resource of laughter.

JEE: Yes—that’s a good point. Before 1996 or even 1998 I don’t think I could have come out and done this. Because when the protease inhibitors came out it was a huge shift in the experience of what HIV/AIDS has been not just for our country but the world. So that was almost a ray of hope that we hadn’t had in the past. And it’s certainly changed everything—it really changed everything. It changed it [the disease] from being, as some people say, a death sentence to being a chronic illness.

JEE: Seven characters.

JEE: How I transition from character to character—did you see any of the Icons series?

JEE: I haven’t changed necessarily the format of how I do things. I stay on stage the whole time and I slowly transform or sometimes swiftly transform from one character to the next. It’s all seamless. Since I last saw you, I’ve gotten much better at this format.

So I really create Lullaby and [am] talking about something that has been, at least for an older generation, very taboo—if not for everybody. I felt almost like my Icons was preparation for this kind of dialogue in this format.

JEE: No it’s not. It was just something that I felt I wanted to write about and I hadn’t seen anyone take that comedic approach to it. Because that’s what I do—my 9 to 5 now is I’m a standup comic—and I use humor in every aspect of my professional life. I had been doing so many HIV/AIDS organization benefits and events, that it seemed like a very natural evolution for me to start to discuss the face of HIV/AIDS today in the 21-century. I debuted this in December 2007—it was commissioned by Diamond Foundation of Nebraska.

JEE: I absolutely love the Bubonic Plague—I call her Boobs—and she’s this very loud, annoyed Jewish woman from the 1960s. She carries a pet rat named Pookie. She’s just so fabulous and the audience really, really loves her. And what I love about this character is I have the opportunity to give an infection/disease a voice. Everybody talks about how infections and diseases are horrible things but they don’t have a voice to talk about what they want and need.

There’s this one moment in the show where I really connect with everybody and she’s talking to them and they’re doing "kawfee talk" and they’re talking about this and that and she says, "You know—I like you. I want to tell you a little secret about us diseases. I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this, but there are only two things that us diseases want to do when we get into the human body: survive and multiply. Repeat after me: survive and multiply."

And usually everybody says it with her and she says, "I said repeat, but whatevah." And she’s making them laugh, but she’s also having a very sobering moment with them—that diseases are also organisms—they are living things that just have a mission. I enjoy that character very much because I can see in the faces of the audience that they have never had a conversation with a disease before. It’s a lot of fun to portray her because of who she represents. I mean the Bubonic Plague is this big, scary thing that happened and to be able to see her in a comedic light and just trying to do what she does—spread her diseases—being kind of clumsy and crazy and eccentric—it kind of gives a face to a big scary monster.

JEE: I do and it’s one of my favorite roles of all time.

JEE: He was the person to give AIDS a human face and that was a very important connection for the public who had only been hearing these crazy stories in the newspapers and on television and these rumors from other people. It didn’t have a human impact until someone as famous as Rock represented what he did at the time that he did it. He was the biggest star in the world and for him to have this experience was quite shocking at the time.

…When I actually do him at the press conference in Paris when he has his interview with the press and sings his song; it’s like reliving that moment and I think it brings home the point that it was a turning point. That press conference was a turning point in peoples understanding of what was happening.

JEE: No he does not—not as a character. The show is named after him and he’s mentioned once in the very beginning of the song and then there’s no more mention of him. A lot of people say Ryan White’s not in the show—why is that? And my answer to that is, I only have 65-75 minutes with my audience. My audience is a smart crowd—I’ve learned who my audience is over the past decade—and my answer to that is usually, if you don’t know who Ryan White is you need to Google it.

JEE: Before I’m a person, I believe myself to be an actor. I love my craft very, very much. And I have been drawn to directing and teaching acting technique for years… Recently I have been doing my Acting Master Classes—I call it Acting Master Class 2.0—in other cities across the country. It’s such a wonderful opportunity for me to connect with my people—and by my people, I mean other actors. I’ve been doing solo theatre for a long time so one thing I do know is how to survive on stage and survive well and create and build characters. I really enjoy sharing that with the next generation of actors who will come after me.