The Playwright vs. the Theater

Three months ago, Victor I. Cazares decided to stop taking their HIV medication until the New York Theatre Workshop calls for a cease-fire in Gaza.

- ALEX JUNG

ON DECEMBER 1, instead of taking their daily dose of the HIV medication Dovato, the playwright Victor I. Cazares filmed an Instagram video of the pill's funeral. They burned the small white tablet on a miniature pyre inside a geode their grandparents had brought from El Apache, a mountain in Chihuahua, Mexico, across the border from their hometown of El Paso, Texas. They gave their second pill a burial with a flower on top in their parents' backyard. The third received a drop of Cazares's own blood while Lucía Méndez's "Amor de Nadie," the theme song of their favorite telenovela growing up, played as the soundtrack. They're planning to do a final video in which their last four pills get kidnapped by Pilgrim Barbie and turned to dust.