When Dimitri Moise received his HIV diagnosis, he says he asked himself questions like “Why me?” and “How could I be so stupid?” Although the Broadway actor knew plenty of people living with the virus — a close friend had revealed his diagnosis when Moise was just 19 — accepting his own status took some major self-reflection. “I started to look inward and realized that I had a lot of internalized — not only HIV phobia, but also homophobia,” Moise tells them. The voices in his head were like those many queer men had heard growing up, which said that being gay meant contracting HIV/AIDS, and that a diagnosis was a death sentence.

“It took me a bit of time to tell those voices, Get the hell out of my head, because I'm much stronger than all of that,” says the 27-year-old, who made his Broadway debut in The Book of Mormon fresh out of theatre school, before touring with Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and appearing on The Last OG with Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish. “The more I started to open up, to tell others and do my own research, the more I saw a lot of that shame and fear go away.” With support from his loved ones, Moise quickly sought care and reached an undetectable viral load. Today, the performer and advocate uses his talents to spread awareness and call people to action in fighting an epidemic that continues to disproportionately affect gay and bisexual black men.

Dimitri Moise (L) and Brandon Gill in As Much As I Can

When we spoke before rehearsals began for his latest project, Moise said he could hardly open the script without crying. An immersive theatre piece based on conversations with hundreds of men like himself, As Much As I Can was created specifically to humanize a startling CDC statistic: that if infection rates don't change, 1 out of every 2 black men who has sex with men in America will contract HIV in their lifetime. The play returns to New York September 12-16 at Joe’s Pub after playing in Harlem last year and touring around the country.

ViiV Healthcare, an independent global company committed to HIV treatment, conducted the ethnographic research that forms the basis of the play. The original study, called “Meet Me Where I Want to Be,” aimed to develop a more thorough understanding of what drives the epidemic in two of the country’s hardest hit communities — Jackson, Miss., and Baltimore — through conversations with hundreds of gay and bisexual black men affected by HIV. ViiV has also funded the development and production of the play as part of a $10 million initiative to support innovative projects that focus on improving HIV outcomes among black men in Jackson and Baltimore. If the study lends human voices to dire statistics, the play brings those voices to life in the hopes that audiences will finally hear them and feel the need to act.

“This is the first piece where I honestly feel like I'm bringing myself into the room,” Moise says. “I don't feel ashamed of allowing my personal experience to really affect what is going on in the play.”

“For whatever reason, nowadays [we] have a difficult time with empathy,” says Sarah Hall, who compiled the play from ViiV’s research and further conversations with men in those communities. “People are saying they understand, but I don't really think they understand.” Hall, who runs Harley & Co., a creative studio that creates brand experiences and is also a producer on the show, had little theatre experience before embarking on this project three years ago. But she had already been considering the power of immersive theatre as a means to affect social change. “The neurological impact of [immersive theatre like Sleep No More] has an effect on you that is similar to you experiencing something in real life,” Hall says.