Justin Weaks’ Boldest Role Is Himself
In A Fine Madness, acclaimed D.C. actor Justin Weaks transforms his experience living with HIV into a deeply personal solo performance.
“I’m really intentional on what I do, where I do it, when I do it,” Justin Weaks tells me, modestly accounting for their impressive track record of acclaimed performances in a decade’s worth of well-received plays on the D.C. stage.
Following their instincts has led the actor to Helen Hayes Award-nominated roles in work as varied as Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches at Arena Stage, and Paola Lázaro’s There’s Always the Hudson at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, three times earning them the prize, and establishing Weaks as a staple in DMV’s thriving theater scene.
“I like to think that I work as a vessel,” they say, “and whatever work I want to do, I want it to be what I feel like the community, or society, needs at the moment. If it’s challenging me, if it’s fun, if it’s in alignment with my values, then I’m down to do it.”
Their latest work, A Fine Madness, more than satisfies those requirements, while also offering Weaks a vessel to find what they need at this moment. For the first time, the actor is also the playwright, having written the solo performance piece to share their experience as a Black queer man living with HIV.
“It’s funny because I’m usually onstage playing a character and I get to cloak myself in the character, and tell the truth, but as the character,” Weaks observes. There are no characters to hide behind in A Fine Madness, though. The truth Weaks is sharing is their own and very personal, which can be frightening.
“Anytime I was looking for ‘How do I write,’ ‘What is one thing that a writer would want me to know as a first-time writer,’ the first thing anyone ever says is write the thing you’re scared to say,” Weaks recalls. “Write the thing that you’re scared to do. And so I did. I knew that if I was going to do this for the first time, I wanted to make sure that I took a risk.”
That risk might have loomed large, but the reward was simple. “I was just writing A Fine Madness as a way to heal my own relationship with my virus,” says Weaks, who started the piece in 2020. “And then all of this other stuff came simply in the wake and in response to my need to heal.”
The other stuff includes Weaks developing the show as a company member at Woolly Mammoth, where, in 2024, they put on a slate of workshop performances to hone the work with director Raymond O. Caldwell, both a collaborator and a friend.
“Raymond — they say iron sharpens iron and he’s just iron,” asserts Weaks. “He is one of the most virtuosic directors in the D.C. area. I’ve always admired his work. I admire his intellect. He has such a big intellect, but he has such a big heart to match it. And honestly, it’s just two friends creating, playing pretend in the rehearsal room.”
This week, the pair will invite audiences to join them, officially debuting A Fine Madness at Woolly Mammoth, before a monthlong tour of three other D.C. venues.
“It’s always been my intention for this piece to infect,” says Weaks. “I wanted it to move in as many spaces as possible. Even when I started writing it back in 2020, I knew that, yeah, it’s a performance piece, but it doesn’t belong in the theater in the way that other plays do. It’s a piece of theater, but it’s supposed to live in the theater in a different way.”
A Fine Madness (which I saw in its workshop form, and found thoroughly moving) is its own unique experience, powered by Weaks’ riveting presence and storytelling. Billed as “a non-linear fragmented story with a kaleidoscope of poetry, affirmations, scientific findings, and narration” — plus movement choreographed by Tony Thomas — the show “is like Alice stepping into the looking glass,” Weaks promises.
“So when people come, it’s like they’re whisked into this other world where they’re going to be asked to participate and engage in it in order to get through it. So just like Alice drops through, and she has these bottles that are like, ‘Drink me,’ you have to do all of these things. But I would describe it as playful, personal, intimate, healing. I would describe it as experimental, and it requires all of us to take a risk.”
A Fine Madness will play four separate D.C. locations in a mini-tour: Dupont Underground, Dupont Circle NW (6/5-7); Hamiltonian Artists, 1353 U St. NW (6/11-14); June 25-28 at and The Nicholson Project, 2310 Nicholson St. SE (6/25-28). Tickets are pay-what-you-will, starting at $25. Visit woollymammoth.net/productions/a-fine-madness-2.
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