Justifying Philosophy before the Court of Athens, Socrates compared himself to a horsefly that spurs a noble, yet lazy horse into action. The underground artistic hub and disco club, Le Madame, is just such a horsefly, spurring the City to reflect on some of the most controversial matters of human life. Athens killed Socrates, Warsaw must not follow in her footsteps. For this reason, Le Madame must be defended.

If the underground artistic hub and club Le Madame needed any arguments to convince the authorities that it ought to have a place in the city, then that argument has recently been found. It is the performance of "Miss HIV," written and directed by Maciej Kowalewski - one of the most important premieres on the underground scene. Kowalewski has taken up a subject which has broken the back of many a dramatic writer - the AIDS epidemic, but he did so in a manner that was counterintuitive and original. Rather than play to the pity of the audience, he provoked them - the play is about a beauty contest between carriers of the disease. This is no joke: such beauty contests are organized by the government of Botswana to demonstrate that the infected are not sub-human. The play follows the lives of four candidates who are preparing for the finals of the beauty contest. We get a view into each of their lives. Kowalewski did not make the illness itself the play's primary subject, but rather the