Show Your Support for Celebration Theatre and One Institute

All proceeds benefit Celebration Theatre and One Institute.

Celebration Theatre and One Institute present BEIRUT @ STORIES: The AIDS Monument, Sunday, April 26, 7:30pm-9pm in West Hollywood Park.

We are so pleased to be hosting a staged reading of Alan Bowne's powerfully resonant 1987 play, BEIRUT, outdoors at the beautiful STORIES: The AIDS Monument. Acclaimed Broadway director Sarna Lapine helms this AIDS allegory about collective witness and intimacy as resistance.

First produced in 1987, BEIRUT is a 3-character play set entirely in a small apartment amidst a war-torn city. Although the play's narrative focus is about war conflict, it has long been understood—particularly within queer artistic communities—as deeply resonant with the emotional realities of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Written and first staged during the height of the epidemic, BEIRUT explores themes of care under pressure, silence versus engagement, and love sustained amid institutional abandonment, making it well aligned with memorial and remembrance-focused cultural programming. The play examines intimacy, fear, withdrawal, and moral responsibility when survival is uncertain.

Sunday, April 26
7:30pm - 9pm

The staged reading will feature:

• Sachin Bhatt as TORCH

• Rosanny Zayas as BLUE

• Richardson Cisneros-Jones as GUARD

• STAGE DIRECTIONS by Petey Gibson

Co-produced by Celebration Theatre and One Institute, with support from the City of West Hollywood.

Celebration Theatre is thankful to the Herb Ritts Foundation for its program support.