On December 1 and Worlds AIDS Day, Michael Kearns will premiere his newest work Going In: Once Upon A Time In South Africa. The performance will take place at the Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California. Michael is a fixture in the Los Angeles art scene and he’s a passionate activist on the side. The tall handsome performer spent a month with his daughter in Johannesburg working at an orphanage.

Kearns says of his visit:

“Like the bulk of my work, Going In will deal with issues of race, class, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, gender, and poverty,” Kearns says. “However, the lens provided by the day-to-day world of South Africa astounded me and forced me into territories of the heart that I’d never dared to visit. To experience these revelations, often alongside my 12-year old daughter, made each day in Johannesburg more luminous.”

Below is an exclusive excerpt from Michael's show, which will premiere in Santa Monica on December 1. The stunning photograph was taken by his daughter, Tina Kearns.

Exclusive Excerpt from Michael Kearns’ Going In: Once Upon A Time in South Africa

The August winds have officially arrived, expressing their tempestuousness. It is freezing this morning, so cold that utter strangers, as we pass each other on the streets, strangers who likely would not have spoken to each other under other circumstances, mutter, almost as a greeting, "Cold." I respond, "Cold." On that we all agreed. The air is dense with clouds of smoke, drifting out of homes with fireplaces, many without electricity, and it smells like a raging forest fire. This is my last day with Teacher Josephine at Park Junior. As we work with the children on an art project that incorporates playing with letters of the alphabet, she and I seize every possible moment to strengthen our soon-to-be-truncated friendship.

We have limited time to infuse each other with what we know, what we believe, and what we feel. "I was teaching at a Soweto high school in 1984 when my girls [students] started dropping like flies. I wanted to bring it out into the open but no one would ever listen." Many believed, and still believe, that "AIDS is a white man's disease. Condoms aren't for black men." When the 27-year old son of her sister ("my own flesh and blood," she says) was dying, all her siblings would admit is that he was "ill." When Josephine saw him, she was aghast. "A skeleton," she says, without emotion. "He died three months later." In the obituary, the grieving aunt truthfully indicated that her nephew died of AIDS. "I wanted people to know what can happen," she tells me. "My sister became hysterical. 'You killed him,' she said. 'He did not die of HIV. You killed him again with lies.'

When Josephine decided that she could no longer endure abuse from her husband, the mother of three children sought the counsel of her church pastor. He insisted that they remain married. "The pastor will always side with the man," she says. In 1991, she left him and was promptly disowned by her family members who provided no support, emotionally or financially, letting their own flesh and blood live in a shelter for a year. "Survival of the fittest," she reminds me. Don't forget that this is a black woman, speaking to a white man, sharing confidences that impugn her race.

She began holding meetings for women in her church, nurturing them to come out about HIV/AIDS. "The wife of the pastor got it from her husband," she remembers. "A man of the cloth." Josephine barely takes a breath as the kids' rowdiness escalates. "Another woman was barren. Her husband's mother informed her daughter-in-law that she must allow her son to have sex outside of the marriage. "That corner, that corner, that corner," she says, pointing in three directions, indicating the intersection of a street corner. "All children by this man, all with AIDS." The stories don't stop there. The debasing shame is so great that suicide is commonplace. "One young girl," she says, "put turpentine on her head and set herself on fire. Even today," she reports, "If someone in a rural area let it be known that they are HIV-positive, they would be stoned to death."

There was a teacher's strike in the summer of 2007, right before we arrived in Johannesburg. "A white female teacher in Soweto," according to Josephine, "was attacked by a dozen black men for her opposing stance." She pauses, but only for a second or two. "When asked to identify one of the perpetrators, she was able to point out one: the principal from another school." I ask her if she believes apartheid is over. In her dealings at Cotlands, she does not feel heard as a black woman who answers to an army of white women who are above her, literally (on the second floor) and figuratively (by their position of power). How can I not confide in Teacher Josephine that I am HIV-positive? When I do, her response needs no extravagant words; she offers the gravitas of support with her unflinching gaze. "No one has HIV in South Africa," she says, sarcastically. "Funeral after funeral after funeral. You bake a cake for the family but you don't talk about it."

I tell her about my experiences as the school bell threatens to end our intimacies. "I want to share three words with you that I have held close during the past 25 years," I say. Taking a pencil from her desk, I ask her for a piece of paper. On it, I write, "Silence Equals Death." She reads the words, takes a deep breath that telegraphs both dismay and relief. "I'm going," she announces, "to write a book." Josephine is my sister, my activist sister.