Jim Eigo is a writer and activist living in New York City. After receiving playwriting degrees from CalArts and UC Davis, he came to the East Village in 1978 for the burgeoning downtown theater scene. But when AIDS threatened to devastate his neighborhood, his profession and his kind, he joined the AIDS activist organization ACT UP, becoming one of a group of community members who remade AIDS drug research and regulation. Jim co-authored two regulatory reforms, expedited approval and expanded access; their implementation facilitated the delivery of treatments to people across the world. That work is profiled in the book, “Let the Record Show” and the documentary films “How to Survive a Plague” and “United in Anger.”

After a stint as a magazine editor, Jim returned to AIDS work in 2012 to help counter the sharp rise ln HIV infection among gay men. He drafted ACT UP’s prevention document, The Atlanta Principles, and served on the Governor’s task force that crafted the Blueprint for Ending the AIDS Epidemic in New York State. He drafted the Blueprint’s HIV testing recommendations and a plan that transformed STD clinics into one-stop hubs of HIV prevention and care. Due largely to the prevention policies outlined in the Blueprint, HIV infection rates in New York State have plummeted. In 2015 the Treatment Action Group gave Jim its Research in Action Award.

During his activist career, Jim managed to publish short fiction, plays, concrete poetry, a story in pictures, theater and dance criticism and essays on topics ranging from sex to the design of clinical trials. Retiring from AIDS work in 2017, he joined Dramatists Guild and returned to his first love, writing for theater.

In his earlier theater life, Jim’s translation-adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Material, “UBU,” inaugurated CalArts’ Theater 2 (with later productions in Baltimore and Philadelphia). His plays “Psycle” (part of an evening, “Undead”) and “Tap” received productions at UC Davis; “Tap” then won a slot for a staged reading by the actors of American Conservatory Theater, directed by Ed Hastings. Jim became the playwright with KRAKEN, Herbert Blau’s “devised theater” troupe, when it was resident at UMBC. There he translated and adapted Brecht’s “Sophocles’ Antigone,” scripted scenes for an adaptation of Kafka’s “The Burrow” and co-scripted (with Blau) “Elsinore”, a blow-up of “Hamlet”, which opened at Baltimore’s Theater Project and went on tour. During his activist years, Jim’s utopian edicts, outlining an ideal federal response to AIDS, were staged at NYC’s LaMama as “Rockville Is Burning,” in which he also performed.

Since his return to writing for theater, Jim has drafted a trilogy of full-length plays, each dealing with a different social justice issue: “Don’t You Touch Me, Dead Man” (which had a reading in midtown Manhattan in July 2018), “Just Who Are You Looking For?” and “Chains of Angels.” Now, to cap off this trio of serious plays, he’s drafted a modern-day satyr play, “U R the Dawg Boyz 2!,” dismantling the nuclear family by beheading it.