Introducing: Resurrection

In a moment of fate in 2017, Dane Stewart is gifted a bundle of love letters and theatrical scripts, written by a queer man named Daryl Allen before AIDS took his life in 1991. Along with the letters, Dane is given a task: tell Daryl's story and give his art the audience it lost when his life was cut short. Part investigation, part documentary, and part love story, Resurrection asks us what we leave behind when we go. Daryl proves that for every person lost to AIDS, there's a life story just waiting to be resurrected. The creation of this podcast was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is a CBC Podcast.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  We loved each other in a way that I can't even define. I can't put words to. We were essential until we weren't anymore.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  This is a preview for a new podcast called Resurrection.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  One thing about Daryl is he had an awesome laugh.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  It's a big, gay love story that spans decades. It's a story so big, it's taken me five years to put it together.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Oh, Dane, wow. Did you have any idea when you first got excited about this, the way in which it could take over your life?

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I'm Dane Stewart. Five years ago, I was given hundreds of pages of old, handwritten love letters, written by a man named Daryl Allen. August 7, 1979. Dear Danny, I love you. Daryl was a playwright, living in San Francisco.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  It was gay Mecca, San Francisco.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Daryl dreamed of having his plays performed onstage, plays about gay struggles. Plays like this.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Dance with me. Paul, don't get that look.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Before Daryl's plays found success and fame, before he got a real shot at being an artist, his life was cut short.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  The doctor turned around and said, you know, you're HIV positive and we're going to have to do this differently.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Daryl died from AIDS in 1991, before any of his plays were produced professionally.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  I made a promise to give Daryl's art the platform he never got when he was alive.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Sounds to me like your heart's in the right place.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  I've spent years learning everything I can about Daryl, tracking down his friends, his lovers, and even visiting his home in Kansas.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Uh, hello, we're in Kansas.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Trying to find the farm where he grew up.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  This is it. This is it? This is it.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  And Daryl's friends, they gave me more letters, more scripts, more items to add to Daryl's archive, but there's one major piece of the puzzle that's missing.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  I had fought to work with Jonathan. He had half the plays, and so I only have half the plays. I had no idea Jonathan was going to go and die on me.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  There's a box out there that has half of the plays Daryl wrote in his life. And this box has been lost, or worse.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Once Jonathan died two years ago, I'm guessing his family just, anything they didn't have a connection to, they would have just tossed.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  This is the story of Daryl Allen, a man who fought through the Vietnam War, gay liberation, the AIDS crisis, through so much history and still found meaning.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  He just had a joy for life.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  And this is the story of my journey to share Daryl's life with the world.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  One ordinary man's place in an extraordinary history, painstakingly pieced together to share with the world. This is Resurrection. Subscribe now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.