One man show pairs circus act with AIDS awareness

It was easy to imagine David Schein in a circus. The opening segment of his solo performance, which came to the Mahaney Center for the Arts Jan. 6 under the improbable name “MYethiOPIA: Tales from the AIDS Education Circus” featured Schein making full use of the lower lobby. He prowled. He circled. When he paused and raised an arm he resembled nothing more or less than a ringleader — minus the top hat and tails, plus full on safari garb.

The persona he adopted was that of the overdressed tourist, come to have a bit of a jaunt around the greatest circus of all, darkest Africa (malaria pills and purified water tablets highly reccommended).

It is uncertain how much of Schein the man was in Schein the character, but in some ways this was unimportant. The performance was based around Schein’s — whoever that is — experiences forming and directing a circus to raise HIV/AIDS awareness in Awassa, Ethiopia. The archetype of the bumbling tourist only serves to highlight the irony of creating educational art in Ethiopia. As Schein points out early on, this is a place where his hiking boots alone could buy three months’ food for an average family.

“My Ethiopia” turns out to be a myth. There is no “my” to be readily paired with “Ethiopia.” There is only myopia, shortsightedness, and a story that is both unique — how many people can say they’ve staged a condom dance with a troupe of street children? – as it is familiar — the well intentioned Westerner running up against reality.

Schein’s show walks us through his journey, step by hilarious step, from disillusioned member of an American circus to respected actor and writer, and finally to a dusty Ethiopian marketplace that would be the stage for his experiment in AIDS awareness.

The experiment was a success. The website for the Awassa AIDS Education Circus — renamed One Love — explains that Ethiopian children are bombarded by awareness campaigns. There are plays, billboards, and TV commercials, and while these children are clearly educated about AIDS, the disease does not seem to be going anywhere. The goal of the circus is to cause as much noise as possible and go out with a bang, in the hopes that some stimuli will be remembered by attendees in the future.

The sheer improbability of pairing AIDS awareness with a circus act seems to work some kind of magic. Schein acted out the chaos of the troupe’s first performance in a  busy Ethiopian square. Thousands of townspeople converged on the group. Jostling onlookers turned into a mob at the climax, when gymnasts appeared with a bag of real condoms, and the circus was almost trampled out of town.

Disaster was averted, but for the organization this climax was only the beginning. One Love AIDS Education Circus has been putting on shows for over five years now. Schein has returned to the United States, where he continues to spread awareness about One Love, is resuming his acting career and recently became Executive Director of the Willowell Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to integrating the arts, education, agriculture and ecology.