Living Proof: Views of a world living with HIV and AIDS

McMillan had not considered himself affected by HIV/AIDS until his colleague and friend Gerald Chapman passed away in 1987. Chapman was a theatre director and educator best known for his work at the Royal Court Young Peoples Theatre (Activist Youth Theatre) and Gay Sweatshop. He directed McMillan’s first two plays: The School Leaver for the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Festival (1978), and Hard Time Pressure (Royal Court Theatre’s Activists Youth Theatre).

Living Proof: Views of a World living with HIV and AIDS – Photography and Writings was co-authored with photographer Nick Lowe and published in 1992. It emerged from a year-long artist residency in North-East England working with people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS, which was supported by the Sutherland based Artists Agency, and ran parallel with Lowe’s photography residency.

During the residency, Nick and McMillan worked with a network of people living with HIV, and well as workers, agencies, organisations and institutions from the voluntary and statutory sectors related to HIV/AIDS. Their work covered health education, Haematology, counselling and advice, social work, and volunteering as key components in the field of HIV work. Despite this support, McMillan and Lowe’s research was challenging, because at this time the distinction between HIV and AIDS was still largely misunderstood amongst the general public, who were fed the myth of it as a ‘gay plague’. Because of this homophobia, communities of colour infected and affected by HIV and AIDS were reluctant to come forward. These issues affected working with Black and Brown communities in Newcastle during the residency, where much of the residency work took place.  

However, McMillan was able to bring together a multi-racial group of students from Newcastle University, who provided some of the book’s material, and who he worked with to create The Last Blind Date Show, a ‘street theatre’ performance piece as queer parody of Cilla Black’s popular, yet heteronormative TV show ‘Blind Date’. The book also included poetry and prose from a cross-section of individuals infected and affected by and working with HIV and AIDS. There were also anonymous pieces from Rule 43 (segregated from the general prison population for sexual offences) prisoners at HM Prison Durham. 

The residency culminated with the week-long North-East HIV & AIDS Festival which included workshops, a performance of The Last Blind Date Show in Earl Grey Square in Newcastle’s city centre, and Pomo Afro Homos (Post-Modern African American Homosexuals), who McMillan invited from New York. 

On a personal level, this residency was a cathartic experience, as some people infected by HIV and AIDS whom McMillan worked with passed away during the residency.