If you could speak from beyond the grave, what would you say? What if you had died of AIDS?

Bill Russell’s compelling show, “Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens,” attempts to answer those questions. The piece, which opens Thursday night in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre, is part of Kansas University Theatre’s annual “Alums Come Home” event. Russell, a KU alumnus himself, is excited about the prospect of staging the show at his old stomping grounds.

“We’ve got an amazing cast,” he says. “People are coming from as far as L.A., and this production incorporates new material, so it’s like a brand new show.”

“Elegies” premiered in 1989 at the height of AIDS crisis in the U.S. Russell was inspired by two separate sources.

“First I was at the unveiling of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987,” he says. “The panels on the quilt are six feet by three feet — coffin-sized — and people could decorate them however they wanted to pay tribute to someone they loved who had died from AIDS.”

His other source was a little older.

“‘Spoon River Anthology’ was a poetry cycle by Edgar Lee Masters published in 1915,” Russell says. “It was a series of free-verse monologues spoken by people from this small town who had died. They were speaking from beyond the grave about their lives, and it really exposed a lot of the myths about small-town America.

“I got the idea to use the quilt as the unifying device just like the cemetery is in ‘Spoon River.'”

“Elegies” is a series of songs and monologues. Each character tells the story of his or her life, but, just like in “Spoon River Anthology,” they are all dead, having succumbed to AIDS. Because the world has changed since the show first premiered, Russell has replaced dated material with updated scenes.

“It’s not a linear plot,” he explains. “It’s a very modular piece, so it’s easy to take some pieces out and put others in.”

But if AIDS isn’t in the public consciousness like it was back in the 1980s, it remains a significant health issue today.

“The number of deaths from AIDS has dropped since medications have made living with HIV more manageable,” Russell says. “But the infection rate has not dropped. It’s still at the same level it was at the height of the crisis.

“It’s a growing problem in the black and Latino communities. You have gay men living life on what’s called the ‘down-low.’ They pretend to be straight, because it’s taboo for them to be gay. They live this secret life, and they bring HIV home to their families.”

Ignorance of HIV/AIDS among the young is a cultural problem too, Russell says.

“I am continually stunned that college students don’t know the science of how you get HIV,” he says. “They don’t know the history because they’re young, but they don’t know how you get it and how you prevent it.”

But he stresses that “Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens” is not a dirge.

“It’s a very entertaining show,” he says. “It’s a celebration of the lives of the people in the story.”

And those people are as diverse as the cultural tapestry of America.

“We’ve got a wild mix of people,” Russell says of the cast. “From a 9-year-old girl to a grandmother. It’s a wonderful company.”

“Elegies for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens” runs February 28 and March 2 and 3 in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre on the KU Campus. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available by calling the box office at 785-864-3982 or online at www.kutheatre.com. Proceeds from the show benefit the Douglas County AIDS Project.