Positive Nation, UK, July/August, 2002

Petty minds and dirty blood by EDWIN J. BERNARD,

After the initial flurry of well-meaning dramas, Aids as a theme for popular entertainment has been thin on the ground. So it comes as a welcome surprise to find that HIV plays a central role in the theatrical tour-de-force that is Street of Blood, a contemporary, devastatingly effective epic in the guise of a campy, adult puppet show. It premiered here in the UK at the recent Brighton Arts Festival.

The genius behind it - he crafted the puppets and conceived, wrote and performs the show practically solo - is 46 year-old Ronnie Burkett (below), a proudly 'gay artist' from the conservative Canadian Province of Alberta, who has been winning awards since he formed his own marionette company in 1986.

The show's most enduringly popular character is small-town widow, Edna Rural, who anchors the two-and-a-half hour performance. Edna was originally conceived as a Canadian icon to be ridiculed - the bigoted, fearful country housewife - explains
Burkett over coffee during the show's Brighton run. "There was a phone-in on the radio, and some woman from middle Alberta started going on about 'them homos' and 'their Aids' and talking about quarantine," he says. At the time, Burkett was performing a nightly revue in Calgary, where he ad-libbed each performance based on the news of the day.

In all of his work - which includes 'Happy', a musical based on the five stages of grief, performed two years ago at the Barbican to great acclaim - Burkett blends autobiography with fantasy, creating daring cultural commentary.

His previous experience as an Aids 'buddy' in Calgary became Edna's own, and she began doing Aids volunteer work in these revues. Another phone-in show, in 1994, about the Canadian Red Cross Hepatitis C scandal - Hep C 'victims' were compensated for the 'dirty blood' by the Canadian Government - was the impetus for Burkett to create 'Street of Blood'.

In the show, Edna's adopted gay son, Eden - who worships a faded Hollywood star named Esme Massengill whom Eden also believes to be his birth mother - returns home to Turnip Corners, Alberta. His icon, Esme, is also there performing an off-off Broadway try-out of a musical about the Virgin Mary. Eden is an angry subversive, beaten by a homophobic father in his childhood, who believes that by committing acts of terrorism against the gay community he will shock them out of their assimilationist complacency and mobilise them against their true enemy, the Christian Right.

Esme and her troupe also happen to be vampires who are trying to control the 'clean' blood supply in order to finance their careers. Edna goes through her own journey - conversing with Christ, accepting the death of her husband from an Aids-related illness (acquired during heart surgery), and her own HIV positive status, something that is only revealed towards the end of the show.

"It's a big journey," admits Burkett, "and it's quite relentless emotionally. What was really important for me was to put a different face on HIV."

It's a stratagem that works, shocking the audience - who gave Burkett a five-minute ovation - out of their own complacency after being entertained with camp humour and spectacular puppetry. It's not the gay man of the piece who has HIV, but plain, ordinary Edna.

"Edna has this mixture of incredible small-minded pettiness combined with an enormous largesse of spirit. She embodies Canadians," explains Burkett. Sadly, 'Street of Blood' gets retired at the end of Burkett's UK tour this summer. The good news is that there will be plenty more from Burkett as both a puppeteer and a performer.

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