Hell is

by Borna barzin

HELL IS, follows three young gay men in a highly stylized Hell, collaging elements of Dante’s Inferno and New York City during the AIDS epidemic. In the play, the men are forced to compete on a fictional reality television show to earn their escape back to Earth’s surface. The play is a satirical, absurd take on how the commercialization of queer culture and major cities such as New York City and Los Angeles has decimated underground queer spaces created by luminaries such as Reza Abdoh and David Wojnarowicz. In tribute to this history, HELL IS marries theater with performance art, incorporating elements of installation, multimedia, and drag performance, disarming the audience and abstracting the playspace. It seeks to revive the underground counterculture in the theater lost to gentrification. 

HELL IS was developed as a part of Egg&Spoon Theater’s Incubate NYC Program. It received a reading at ART/NY in Fort Greene in April of 2023.