TheirStories: The AIDS Plays Project

Your first gay bar. A room crowded with men. Every one of them homosexual. Are you going to hang on till they bring the lights up?

For one night only, TheirStories and The AIDS Plays Project join forces at The Standard to celebrate the life and work of Colm Ó Clúbhán. 

This special evening will feature a performance from Friends of Rio Rita’s, his rarely seen, semi-autobiographical play from 1985. Sharply funny and deeply moving, it follows two gay men who flee Ireland for London, charting their journey through the city’s clubs and cruising spots amid rising anti-Irish prejudice. 

Colm Ó Clúbhán was an Irish playwright whose work gave voice to the experience of being queer and Irish during a time of intense social and political marginalisation. He emigrated from Dublin to London in 1973, where he became part of the queer community in Brixton. Over the next decade he wrote half a dozen plays exploring exile, sexuality and Irish identity, including Friends of Rio Rita’s and Reasons for Staying. He passed away from AIDS-related illnesses in 1989, aged just 34.

Director Alastair Curtis will also be joined in conversation by Mary Evans Young and Derek Evans, two of Ó Clúbhán’s closest friends, who will share memories of their friendship with Ó Clúbhán and his writing as well as their ongoing efforts to extend his legacy as one of the most original queer Irish dramatists of the twentieth-century. 

The evening will conclude with a performance by NiCKY, a songwriter from London’s queer performance scene, who will perform I Saw You from their forthcoming EP. A love song about cruising, it draws on lyrics first conceived by Ó Clúbhán and radical theatre collective the Brixton Faeries in the 1970s.

Spaces are strictly limited, reserve your place HERE.

Monday 27 October

Doors 6.30pm

Event starts at 7pm

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TheirStories is an intergenerational LGBTQ+ platform & event series, created to investigate, celebrate and uplift the diverse narratives and stories of the UK’s vibrant LGBTQ+ community, with talks, performances, cultural moments and music. Curated by Laurie Belgrave, founder of The Chateau, and currently resident at The Standard, London, these nourishing conversations between generations of queer creatives, artists & humxns provide a much needed space for learning, reflection and connection, for both the queer community, and allies looking to educate themselves on queer issues. TheirStories values and celebrates our history, contextualising our existence with the stories of the queer people who came before us. 

The AIDS Plays Project is a theatre company dedicated to reviving and republishing the works of writers whose lives were cut short by HIV/AIDS. Through one-off rehearsed readings by award-winning actors, activists and drag artists, it seeks to restore an intergenerational link between these playwrights and contemporary queer audiences. Since its founding in 2023, the project has been featured by BBC, Interview, Frieze, TANK, HERO, The Stage, and the Financial Times, who wrote: “play by play, The AIDS Plays Project is reinventing the queer theatrical canon.” Led by writer and director Alastair Curtis, the company are Associate Artists at London Performance Studios, where their third season has left “the next generation of theater gays gagging for more.” (BUTT) They revived Colm Ó Clúbhán’s Reasons for Staying earlier this year, and will be publishing the play for the first time as part of  a new anthology, forthcoming in 2026.