"To gay people everywhere, whom I love so dearly,
The Normal Heart is our history."

A letter from Larry Kramer

PLEASE KNOW

Thank you for coming to see our play.

Please know that everything in The Normal Heart happened. These were and are real people who lived and spoke and died, and are presented here as best I could. Several more have died since, including Bruce, whose name was Paul Popham, and Tommy, whose name was Rodger McFarlane and who became my best friend, and Emma, whose name was Dr. Linda Laubenstein. She died after a return bout of polio and another trip to an iron lung. Rodger, after building three gay/AIDS agencies from the ground up, committed suicide in despair. On his deathbed at Memorial, Paul called me (we'd not spoken since our last night in this play) and told me to never stop fighting.

Four members of the original cast died as well, including my dear sweet friend Brad Davis, the original Ned, whom I knew from practically the moment he got off the bus from Florida, a shy kid intent on becoming a fine actor, which he did.

Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague.

Please know that no country in the world, including this one, especially this one, has ever called it a plague, or dealt with it as a plague.

Please know that there is no cure.

Please know that after all this time the amount of money being spent to find a cure is still miniscule, still almost invisible, still impossible to locate in any national health budget, and still totally uncoordinated.

Please know that here in America case numbers continue to rise in every category. In much of the rest of the world - Russia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa - the numbers of the infected and the dying are so grotesquely high they are rarely acknowledged.

Please know that all efforts at prevention and educations continue their unending record of abject failure.

Please know that there is no one in charge of this plague. This is a war for which there is no general and for which there has never been a general. How can you win a war with no one in charge?

Please know that beginning with Ronald Reagan (who would not say the word "AIDS" publicly for seven years), every single president has said nothing and done nothing, or in the case of the current president, says the right things and then doesn't do them.

Please know that most medications for HIV/AIDS are inhumanly expensive and that government funding for the poor to obtain them is dwindling and often unavailable.

Please know that pharmaceutical companies are among the most evil and greedy nightmares ever loosed on humankind. What "research" they embark upon is calculated only toward finding newer drugs to keep us, just barely, from dying, but not to make us better or, god forbid, cured.

Please know that an awful lot of people have needlessly died and will continue to needlessly die because of any and all of the above.

Please know that the world has suffered at the very least some 75 million infections and 35 million deaths. When the action of the play that you have just seen begins, there were 41.

I have never seen such wrongs as this plague, in all its guises, represents, and continues to say about us all.

Larry Kramer

For more information, visit TheNormalHeartBroadway.com

• David Furnish: 'The Normal Heart' Movingly Captures the Fight Against AIDS, Then and Now [Huffington Post, April 30, 2011]
• Larry Kramer's AIDS drama 'The Normal Heart' wins Tony Award for best play revival [Washington Post, June 12, 2011]
• Tony Awards kick off with two 'The Normal Heart' wins [Globe & Mail, June 12, 2011]
• Normal Heart Wins, Harris Dazzles [The Advocate, June 13, 2011]

The widely acclaimed first Broadway production of Larry Kramer's classic The Normal Heart took three honors during the incredibly entertaining 65th Tony Awards ceremony hosted by a spirited Neil Patrick Harris, who set the tone for the evening with his witty opening number by declaring, "Broadway...it's not just for gays anymore!"

The Normal Heart, which was first produced off-Broadway in 1985, made its official Broadway debut this spring, and chronicles the early years of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, won the Tony for Best Revival of a Play. Heart also won awards for Ellen Barkin (Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play) and John Benjamin Hickey (Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play).

The often irascible Kramer gave a heartfelt, though uncharacteristically subdued speech when he accepted (along with producer Daryl Roth) the award for Best Revival. "To gay people everywhere, whom I love so dearly, The Normal Heart is our history," Kramer said. "I could not have written it had not so many needlessly died. Learn from it and carry on the fight. Let them know that we are a very special people, an exceptional people, and that, our day will come."

• Life Lessons in 'Normal Heart' [New York Times, June 23, 2011 ]

Ian Smith was born and raised in the 1980s in Bangor, Me., a world away from the young gay men of New York City of that era who were among the first to die of complications from AIDS. Mr. Smith, 29, is gay himself, and in Manhattan he has heard stories about some of those men from their friends and lovers who survived. But nothing prepared him for the shock he felt recently seeing "The Normal Heart," the Broadway drama about the early years of AIDS, which won the Tony Award for best play revival this month.

The fear and terror of the gay characters onstage, Mr. Smith said in an interview outside the theater, was such a sharp contrast to his own experience, in which friends can be casual about using condoms. His eyes still wet from tears, he recalled how one friend recently had a scare and thought he might have contracted H.I.V.

"It was actually kind of frightening, because he was like, 'Well, at this point, even if I got infected, it's not the worst thing in the world anymore,'" Mr. Smith said. "And you see this play and you're like, 'The '80s seem a long time ago, and yet we're making the same dumb mistakes.'"

• [Brad] Pitt's Plan B producing 'Normal Heart' [Variety, August 31, 2011 ]

Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment has come aboard to produce Ryan Murphy's "The Normal Heart."

Based on Larry Kramer's semi-autobiographical play, pic centers on an activist's attempts to raise HIV/AIDS awareness during the 1980s.

• For One Night, Larry Kramer's Not Angry [Daily Beast, April 27, 2011]

Who on earth was this Larry Kramer, and what did he do with the man everyone knew so well, the one who just a few weeks before practically started a tour of his apartment with a show of his HIV medications?

From the outside, he looked exactly the same. He was still wearing his trademark Carhart overalls, the aforementioned jewelry still adorned nearly all of his fingers, his round black glasses were where they always were. In short, he was still perfectly maintaining that biblical "is he a prophet, is he a hysteric" look. But something was different about this Larry, and that something may be this: after several decades in which his brand of activism frequently overshadowed his artistic work, this opening on Broadway was giving him a new lease.

• Ben Brantley: Raw Anguish of the Plague Years [New York Times, April 27, 2011]

More than a quarter of a century after it first scorched New York, "The Normal Heart" is breathing fire again. The passionately acted new Broadway production of Larry Kramer's watershed drama from 1985 - an indictment of a world unwilling to confront the epidemic that would come to be known as AIDS - blasts you like an open, overstoked furnace. Your eyes are pretty much guaranteed to start stinging before the first act is over, and by the play's end even people who think they have no patience for polemical theater may find their resistance has melted into tears. No, make that sobs.

'Body Awareness' review: Tap to lesbian funny bone
[San francisco Chronicle, February 4, 2012]

It's Body Awareness Week at little, liberal Shirley State College in tiny Shirley, Vt., and the fervent lesbian feminist professor who organized it isn't happy about the female nude photographs displayed in the student union for the occasion. Even worse, in Annie Baker's hilarious "Body Awareness" at the Aurora Theatre, the highly suspect male photographer is a guest in her house. And her partner is considering posing for him.

A lot more is about to go wrong for Amy Resnick's delightfully dogmatic academic Phyllis and Jeri Lynn Cohen's no less politically correct but perhaps perilously more open-minded partner, Joyce. But much more goes right in director Joy Carlin's fine-tuned production that opened Thursday as the anchor of the Aurora's annual Global Age Project new plays festival.

[Continued here]

Gay prisoners to get jail tales shown in Artangel installation (2012)
[The Guardian, March 5, 2012]

In a cold and dilapidated rehearsal room on the City of London outskirts, five men in blindfolds are being led on lengths of thread by five others. On the floor are sheets of paper covered in bread arranged into sculptural shapes.

This a rehearsal for A Tender Subject, a play/installation by artist and director Mark Storor created with gay male prisoners - a vulnerable, often invisible group who are rarely officially recognised.

From 16 March, in a short run in a secret location, audiences will walk through an installation led by actors playing prison officers and, says Storor, experience moments of tenderness in the gay prisoners' harsh lives.

Bread is important in jail, says Storor. "Lots of men end up with loaves of Mothers Pride in their cells - the brand has the contract for prisons. It's currency, you can play games with it, it's comforting. We're making a giant bread prison cell which will be about trying to somehow protect yourself, to give yourself comfort, but of course it's futile."

Three years in the making, A Tender Subject was commissioned by Artangel, famous for producing art outside galleries including Rachel Whiteread's House and Jeremy Deller's recreation of the Battle of Orgreave.

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Avenue Q's Same-Sex Puppets Rod and Ricky Will Tie the Knot; Engagement Photo Released
[Playbill, July 21, 2011]

Avenue Q producers have announced that Rod and Ricky, the same-sex puppets from the Tony Award-winning musical, are engaged and will tie the knot July 24 -- the first day same-sex couples can be legally married in the state of New York.

Having met and fallen in love on stage 3,267 times since Avenue Q opened on Broadway in 2003 before transferring to New World Stages two years ago, the two grooms will join countless other men and women who will line up at City Hall in New York City July 24 to exchange vows on this landmark day. After saying "I do," the happy couple will race back to the theatre district for the 3 PM matinee performance of Avenue Q at New World Stages.

"To have this finally happen for us -- especially so soon after Will and Kate -- is unbelievable to me," said Rod in a statement. "I realize there are a lot of broken hearts out there now that Ricky and I are off the market -- step back, all you chorus boys! -- but I've known since day one that Ricky is the husband for me. He's the furry fellow I want to spend my life with both on and off the stage."

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• Photo Coverage: AVENUE Q's Gay Couple 'Rod' & 'Ricky' Wed in NYC [Broadway World, July 25, 2011]

The Tony Award-winning musical AVENUE Q celebrated same-sex marriage in the State of New York yesterday, July 24th when two of the show's stars - same-sex puppets Rod and Ricky -- exchanged vows in tandem with their flesh and blood Brothers and Sisters (and straight couples, too!), who were married on the historic day of same-sex marriage in New York. BroadwayWorld was there and brings you photo coverage below!

In attendance at the brief wedding ceremony was also AVENUE Q's Kate Monster, who served as Flower Girl. Also in attendance for the historic wedding ceremony will be AVENUE Q's Jennifer Barnhart, Jed Resnick and Howie Michael Smith.

The wedding was officiated by Amy Hausman, an All Peoples Wedding Officiant for the Starlight Rainbow Wedding Initiative.

Having met and fallen in love on stage 3,267 times since AVENUE Q opened on Broadway in 2003 before transferring to New World Stages two years ago, Rod and Ricky and the countless fans who love them are thrilled that they can celebrate their love and finally make their union official with the passage of the historic same-sex marriage law last month.

Return of [Reflections of a] Rock Lobster (1981)
[The Advocate, March, 2012]

Written by Aaron Fricke in 1981, Reflections of a Rock Lobster is an autobiographical tale of the then 18-year-old high school senior who - more than three decades before Constance McMillen made headlines in Mississippi - successfully sued his Rhode Island school for the right to take a same-sex date to the prom. "I remember reading this book 30 years ago and thinking, I would never have had the courage to do that," says Burgess Clark, executive artistic director of the Boston Children's Theatre (BostonChildrensTheatre.org). Clark has now adapted the groundbreaking story into a play that will make its world premiere in March at the Boston Center for the Arts.

The play, which explores topics not often associated with children's theater - gay teens, prejudice, depression - is part of BCT's commitment to broadening the diversity of the arts for today's youth. "Three years ago when I assumed leadership of BCT," says Clark, "I wanted to dedicate it to doing stories of history and triumph through the eyes of a child. We started with The Diary of Anne Frank, and this past year we did To Kill a Mockingbird. Rock Lobster will be third in this series."

[Continued here]

Michael Giltz: Gay Boy Scouts On The Prowl In "Wild Animals" (2011)
[Huffington Post, November 21, 2011]

If you're studying nature and come across an unexpected creature or observe unusual behavior, you shouldn't get distracted by anything else. Keep your focus on the prize you've discovered. That's a lesson for playwright Thomas Higgins, who has nailed down some fresh relationships and intriguing moments in his new play Wild Animals You Should Know. But instead of focusing in on those interesting new creatures, he gets distracted by the ordinary and mundane.

The heart of his new drama is the odd friendship between Jacob (Gideon Glick) and Matthew (Jay Armstrong Johnson). In one of several marvelous scenes, the show begins with Jacob and Matthew chatting online via video. Matthew is dressed in his full Scout uniform and reciting the Boy Scout code as he sexily removes the cap and scarf and then unbuttons his shirt in a slow strip tease. It's Jacob's birthday and Matthew has promised the full monty. Jacob is gay while Matthew is straight-ish but enjoying the attention of Jacob's desire and, yes, getting off on it himself. When Matthew says he's not gay but it just so happens that Jacob "gives really good blow-jobs," you might wonder who is kidding who. Still, when Matthew insists he's just narcissistic, it rings true. Their dynamic -- of friendship and sex, of an ostensibly straight kid dominating and yet needing the approval of a gay kid -- is a rich one.

[Continued here]

• Wild Animals You Should Know — Camping out with the Boy Scouts Off B'way [Oscar E Moore, Novenber 28, 2011]

The Laramie Project (2000) [Wikipedia]

The Laramie Project is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project (specifically, Leigh Fondakowski, Stephen Belber, Greg Pierotti, Barbara Pitts, Stephen Wangh, Amanda Gronich, Sara Lambert, John McAdams, Maude Mitchell, Andy Paris, and Kelli Simpkins) about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The murder was denounced as a hate crime motivated by homophobia and brought attention to the lack of hate crimes laws in various states, including Wyoming.

The play draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries and published news reports. It is divided into three acts, and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.

The Laramie Project premiered at The Ricketson Theatre by the Denver Center Theatre Company (Denver) (part of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts) in February 2000 and was then performed in the Union Square Theater in New York City before a November 2002 performance in Laramie, Wyoming. The play has also been performed by high schools, colleges, and community theaters across the country, as well as professional playhouses in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

[Continued here]

• Big Opening for Epilogue to 'The Laramie Project' [New York Times, August 3, 2009 ]

Moisés Kaufman, the playwright and director who, with his Tectonic Theater Project company, wrote and produced the first "Laramie Project," said the epilogue would explore the impact of the Shepard killing on the residents of Laramie, Wyo., where it occurred. The dialogue will be drawn from interviews with dozens of people there, some of whom were involved in the crime, including Aaron McKinney, who was convicted of murdering Mr. Shepard and who gave an interview to the Tectonic artists.

"We wanted to see what occurs in a small town in the long run when it's been subject to such a devastating event," Mr. Kaufman said in an interview. "What has been the long-lasting effect of this watershed moment? Is the fallout of these events positive, negative or perhaps a better question, is it measurable in those terms?"

In holding multiple premieres of the play on the same night, Mr. Kaufman said he was taking a page from the Federal Theater Project, the New Deal program that often opened plays in a multitude of cities on the same night.

• Robert Bullen: Redtwist Theatre's Must-see The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (2009) Finds the Hope in the Horror [Huffington Post, March 6, 2012]

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later debuted on October 12, 2009 -- the 11th anniversary of Shepard's death -- as a simultaneous reading across 150 theatres. And now, Chicago's Redtwist Theatre, under the direction of Greg Kolack, is delivering a powerful, unfettered, supremely well-acted and deeply authentic Chicago premiere production in their 50-seat storefront space. ...

From the hundreds of interviews with residents featured in the original play, perhaps the most eye-opening discovery is that several members of the community discredit Shepard's death as hate crime-related. Rather, they view it as simply a robbery gone wrong by a bunch of tweaked-out teenagers.

As appalling as that viewpoint may be to many (including me), the play's creators use this as an opportunity to learn how such a perverse viewpoint comes to be -- and if there is, indeed, any validity to it. And the results are frustrating, frightening and, in an unsettling way, fascinating. ...

The final hopeful coda of this play concerns the evolution of the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This measure, which expanded current federal hate crimes law to include violence based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, was signed into law in 2010 -- 11 years after Matthew's murder and death.

Change may come slow, but change does come.

Bent (1979) (the play) [Wikipedia]

Bent is a two-hour 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives.

The title of the play refers to the slang word "bent" used in some European countries to refer to homosexuals. When the play was first performed, there was only a small trickle of historical research or even awareness about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. In some regards, the play helped increase that historical research and education in the 1980s and 1990s. ...

Max, a promiscuous gay man in 1930s Berlin, is at odds with his wealthy family because of his homosexuality. One evening, much to the resentment of his boyfriend Rudy, he brings home a handsome Sturmabteilung man. Unfortunately, Hitler has just decided to get rid of the Sturmabteilung corps, which was infamous for same-sex inclinations among its ranks. The Sturmabteilung man is discovered and killed by SS men in Max and Rudy's apartment, and the two have to flee Berlin.

[Continued here]

• Bent (1997) (the film) [IMSb]

Naked Boys Singing! to Conclude Off-Broadway Run, [January 28, 2012] (1999)
[Broadway World, January 3, 2012]

Naked Boys Singing!, the fifteen-song celebration of the male form will hit its final milestone: it will end its New York run Saturday January 28th after 3,069 performances. It opened July 22, 1999 at the Actors Playhouse, making it the longest running Off-Broadway musical after The Fantasticks. But everyone in that show wore clothes!

The Naked Boys are currently appearing at New World Stages - Stage 2, located at 340 West 50th Street, between 8th & 9th Avenues. Naked Boys plays Thursday and Saturday evenings at 8pm.

Still drawing equally gay and straight crowds, Naked Boys has become a New York mainstay, while the London production, which opened to critical acclaim in the West End, enjoys its second year. 2012 will offer the highly anticipated new production in Sydney, Australia, among others. Worldwide licensing is handled by Martian Entertainment.

Naked Boys Singing! is produced by Jamie Cesa, Carl D. White, Hugh Hayes, and Tom Smedes. It is directed and was conceived by Robert Schrock, and choreographed by Jeffry Denman. Schrock and a team of 12 writers -- Stephen Bates, Marie Cain, Perry Hart, Shelly Markham, Jim Morgan, David Pevsner, Rayme Sciaroni, Mark Savage, Ben Schaechter, Trance Thompson, Mark Winkler and two-time Emmy Award winner Bruce Vilanch -- have written a bouncy (pun intended) and fabulous musical revue that reminds us that clothes alone do not make the man.

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• Milwaukee pays $20,000 to settle with gay arts group [WGN News, July 15, 2010]

The city temporarily shut down "Naked Boys Singing!" in 2005 while it considered the group's application for a theater permit. The Milwaukee Gay Arts Center later received a permit and reopened the show.

The suit alleged the city violated the First Amendment by shutting down the play after citizen complaints. It asked for $800,000.

The center's executive director, Paul Masterson, says the settlement sends a message that government shouldn't interfere lightly with theatrical works that celebrate gay identity.

Rent (1996) [Wikipedia]

Rent... is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

The musical was first seen in a limited three-week workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 1994. This same New York City off-Broadway theatre was also the musical's initial home following its official January 25, 1996 opening. The show's creator, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly the night before the off-Broadway premiere. The show won a Pulitzer Prize, and the production was a hit. The musical moved to Broadway's larger Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996.

On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won a Tony Award for Best Musical among other awards. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008, after a 12-year run and 5,124 performances, making it the ninth-longest-running Broadway show by that time, ten years behind The Phantom of the Opera as of December 2009. The production grossed over $280 million.

[Continued here]

• Catholic school downplays angst over student musical's gay characters [Salt Lake Tribune, October 22, 2009]

Judge Memorial Catholic High's drama department raised the curtain Thursday night on the rock musical "Rent" despite criticism from some Utah Catholics and a priest offended by the play's gay characters.

The show is a tamed-down school edition of the 1990s Broadway hit about seven friends living the bohemian lifestyle in New York's East Village.

It is to run for five more shows this week and next at Judge, one of Utah's three Catholic high schools.

Sister Catherine Kamphaus, superintendent of schools in the Salt Lake City diocese, said she read the script at the request of Bishop John Wester, and she watched a dress rehearsal Tuesday.

"There is absolutely nothing that would be offensive," Kamphaus said Thursday. "It wasn't condoning the gay and lesbian lifestyle."