As I walked silently out of the Golden Theatre, I thought about what I was going to write for this post. Normally I discuss the incredible cast, the synopsis, the stage door. However, this phenomenal play is far above that.
Once a show ends, many normally start talking and mingling with the rest of the audience. Not this time. After the applause everyone walked slowly in silence, which was broken by the many people still in tears.
This play is about the AIDS epidemic, or I should say, the beginning of it. "Please know that everything that happened in The Normal Heart actually happened" Larry Kramer writes in the letter that was passed out as everyone was leaving the theatre. This play is about the fight for the many gays to gain recognition from the government. It's about people not giving a damn about this disease when it was still believed to reside only in gay communities. It's about family. It's about denial. It's about ignorance. It's about love, finding it, and having it taken away from you.
Most of all, this play is about recognition. Recognition for the terror that our fellow human beings went through in the early 80s and recognition for the fact that AIDs is still a plague today, though many people fail to refer to it as such.
".....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 acknowledged it as 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 education 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, excerpt from the letter that was handed out.
The words of this play are still ringing in my ears, and so they should. Beyond the fact that play itself was incredibly well done, it is a true story. I did not live through that time period. I really knew little about the terror that so many people went through at that time. And though I'm sure I still understand little about the constant fear, hurt and loss that so many went through, I think this play gave me a little taste.
This will be my last post for a while. I'm going away for the summer, but when I come back I can promise posts on Memphis, The Motherfucker with the Hat and Hair!
