Jim Petosa in Conversation with Dramaturg Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.
In this conversation, playwright Jim Petosa and dramaturg Jo Michael Rezes discuss the making of FRAGMENTS, transforming memory into theatre, and the play’s relationship to AIDS history and queer literature,and inspirations for the piece. This interview has been edited for clarity and space.

I’d like to start by asking you about when you first started to think about collaging these “fragments” into a piece of writing?

For many years, when I would tell the stories to friends and acquaintances, the idea of “putting them together somehow” would often come up by the listener. I told many of these stories for decades, but never had time enough to devote to a sustained effort with them. When life presented the focused time and space to pursue them and created a “piece” it all started to come together.

Some playwrights write “memory plays” they never inhabit, so what does it mean to you as a performer getting to embody these memories as you guide the audience through your story?

I wondered if I was the right person to embody these stories. As a director, primarily, I have an affinity for what an actor does, but I do not have the habits of an actor. But, in exploring this particular piece, I came to believe that I would do them justice and serve an audience in a unique way.

You start the piece with an epigraph from E.M. Forster’s, Howards End (1910): “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death is what saves him.” I won’t destroy the poetry of this provocation by asking you to explain why you invoke this quote. Instead, what is another selection you would consider as an epigraph?

Another selection I considered is a lyric from a Joni Mitchell song….it goes “Love is a story told to a friend. It’s second-hand.” [“Conversation” 1966] I love how this lyric suggests that a love relationship does exist, but its meaning and union is often expressed to another person. The love is identified when it is revealed to a listener hearing the story of the beloved. I liked that idea for this piece.

Audiences might be reminded of other “AIDS plays” in relation to the stories contained here in FRAGMENTS. Are there memoirs or plays centered on the HIV/AIDS crisis, or authors who live(d) and love(d) with the virus, that you deeply admire or from whom you draw inspiration?

My antecedents for this work are Spaulding Grey and his remarkable performance pieces that had a unique way of spinning narrative and engaging an audience. For some time, I thought that the “fragments,” though they weren’t called that yet, could be titled and that those titles could be put on file cards and dumped into a box. I would sit beside the box and randomly pick a card. The title on the card would elicit the story that I would share with an audience extemporaneously. The random nature of it would ensure that no performance would be alike. I still think it is a compelling idea. The other antecedent is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Her one person version of FLEABAG and its genre mixing, fourth-wall breaking, profoundly funny, absurdly tragic, and willfully confessional melange was an inspiration to me.

What are some literary relationships or love stories you see mirrored in FRAGMENTS?

I am always intrigued by stories where one person’s challenge becomes a shared one. It can be a result of a friendship, a love relationship, a marriage, even a professional relationship. But they all share this moment of choice. When one person agrees to take it on and share all of it. And the resulting epiphanies that come with doing it are unique. Trever and Merrick in THE ELEPHANT MAN, Helen and Annie in THE MIRACLE WORKER, Smike and Nicholas in NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, The relationships inside plays from WAITING FOR GODOT to Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN are just the surface scratchers of the mythos undergirding FRAGMENTS.

If you could ask the audience to engage in a practice after they see the show, what would you hope they do for themselves or others after witnessing these memories on stage?

Pick an episode in your life…one that occurs on a single day. A memory that is so clear for you that when you lived the moment, time itself seemed to slow because the details of the experience were of such a moment! Share that story on a video, or a voice recording, or in words on a page. Go into each detail. Take no shortcuts. Take it to its end. See what you come up with. My guess is that the episode will be worth sharing and that it will have some transcendent meaning that will do something to you, the teller and to the listener, as well.

These references function as memory objects: pop culture, places, institutions, technologies, music, and ordinary things that locate Fragments in queer life, AIDS history, domestic intimacy, and late-twentieth-century American culture.

“Wonder Twin Powers. Activate!” — 1970s television reference: A reference to the Wonder Twins from Super Friends, this phrase becomes a private ritual between James and Raymond. In the ICU, after Raymond says he wants to stay with James, they touch their rings together and invoke the phrase as a gesture of partnership, humor, and queer commitment.

The Twilight Zone — 1959–1964: James compares the masked, robed, gloved medical staff to something out of The Twilight Zone. The reference captures the surreal terror of the hospital: familiar medicine becomes alien, theatrical, and frightening.

The New York Times — AIDS information culture: In the early years of the epidemic, newspapers were crucial sources of information. The play remembers people turning to mainstream outlets like The New York Times alongside queer community newspapers while trying to distinguish fact from rumor.

The New York Native — 1980–1997: A gay newspaper based in New York, The New York Native represents the importance of queer press networks during the AIDS crisis. Before the internet, such publications helped circulate urgent information, debate, fear, rumor, activism, and community knowledge.

800 Numbers and Hotlines — 1980s crisis support: Before Google, AIDS information often came through telephone hotlines. In Fragments, an 800 number directs James toward a local clinic, where he encounters one of the play’s first figures of queer community care.

NIH / National Institutes of Health — founded 1887; AIDS research era: The National Institutes of Health appears as part of the reason Washington, D.C. seems to offer greater medical possibility. For James and Raymond, proximity to NIH suggests hope, access, and a fighting chance.

AZT / Compound S — 1987: AZT, first known to James and Raymond as Compound S, represents experimental hope in the early treatment landscape. It was one of the first drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS, remembered here as both possibility and difficulty.

Orion / Michael’s Star — 1989: After Michael’s death, James and Raymond choose a star in Orion’s belt as “Michael’s Star,” a place where Raymond can continue speaking to his friend. The night sky becomes a map of mourning and continuing bonds.

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto — 1878: One of Raymond’s favorite pieces, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto appears on the radio during the ambulance drive near the end of Raymond’s life. Because the radio is already tuned to classical music, the moment feels discovered rather than staged — an uncanny sign at the threshold of death.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet — 1952–1966: This mid-century sitcom reference appears in relation to twin beds late in Raymond’s illness. The wholesome domestic image is darkly queered, turning an icon of American family life into a scene of caregiving, separation, comedy, and grief.

Father Knows Best — 1954–1960: Another reference to idealized mid-century domesticity, Father Knows Best contrasts with the realities of queer caregiving, legal exclusion, illness, and chosen kinship.

General Hospital — premiered 1963: The bedroom becomes part sitcom and part soap-opera sickroom. This reference captures the absurdity of ordinary domestic life becoming medicalized.

“Spidey Sense” — Spider-Man, created 1962”: The epilogue uses this comic-book phrase to describe James’s intuitive sense that something is wrong. The reference gives language to grief’s uncanny alert system,

This section gathers works that illuminate the play’s themes: AIDS drama, queer memory, chosen kinship, caregiving, illness, literary inheritance, and the art of preserving lives that institutions failed to protect.

E. M. Forster, Howards End — 1910: Forster’s novel asks what people inherit from one another — property, culture, obligation, harm, and connection. Its famous concern with connection resonates deeply with Fragments, a play about how lives are joined across illness, memory, and loss.

Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart — 1985: One of the most influential early AIDS plays, Kramer’s drama channels grief and rage into public accusation. It helped define the AIDS play as a form of activism, testimony, and theatrical emergency.

William M. Hoffman, As Is — 1985: Opening the same year Raymond is diagnosed in Fragments, As Is is among the earliest major American plays to address AIDS directly. It focuses on lovers, friends, fear, abandonment, and care. 

Tony Kushner, Angels in America — 1991–1992: Kushner’s epic brings fantasy, politics, humor, rage, and spiritual vision into the landscape of AIDS drama. Its angels, ghosts, and prophetic theatricality offer a useful counterpoint to the intimate memory structure of Fragments.

Paula Vogel, The Baltimore Waltz — 1992: Vogel’s play transforms grief into fantasy, absurdity, travel, and theatrical invention. Like Fragments, it asks how theatre can hold illness and love without reducing either to realism alone.

Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993 — 2021: A major oral history of ACT UP New York, Schulman’s book offers political and activist context for the years surrounding Fragments. It is especially useful for understanding AIDS activism, community networks, and the fight for treatment access.

Matthew López, The Inheritance — 2018: López’s two-part play adapts the structure of Forster’s Howards End to consider what generations of gay men inherit from the AIDS crisis. Like Fragments, it turns toward memory, legacy, queer kinship, and the unfinished work of mourning.

Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers — 2023: A contemporary film about queer memory, grief, ghosts, family, and the ache of lives that might have been. It resonates with Fragments through its emotional attention to love, loss, and impossible return.

“Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” The New York Times — 1981: This infamous headline helped shape early public perception of the epidemic through stigma, fear, and the framing of AIDS as a “gay” disease. It remains a key reference point in histories of AIDS media coverage.