Backstory Your Guide to Timeline Productions
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BACKSTORY YOUR GUIDE TO TIMELINE PRODUCTIONS BY LARRY KRAMER directed by Nick Bowling PRESENTED AT YESTERDAY’S STORIES. TODAY’S TOPICS. From Artistic Director PJ Powers a message for Disease Control and don’t want to acknowledge Since TimeLine first became pack the same punch as as the audience came out, Prevention named it “acquired that the people who died were interested in producing this when the disease’s carnage is passionately urging them to immunodeficiency syndrome” even part of their history … play in 2010, there has been felt more personally through learn more and do more. (AIDS) in 1982—a full five These people died so that you much progress for LGBT rights a human face. And that is We don’t have the benefit of years before President Ronald could live.” in the United States. But there what Larry Kramer boldly and his presence on the Belmont Reagan would ever utter the are still a disturbing number of unapologetically did in 1985 TimeLine’s mission is not Avenue sidewalk outside Stage n 2010 TimeLine’s liter- name in a speech. stories of intolerance, dis- with The Normal Heart. He put just about looking backward 773 each night, but we hope Iary manager, Ben Thiem, crimination, fear, shame and a face on not just the devasta- During that time scores of into history. It’s ultimately you’ll still experience his urg- encouraged me and my fellow death—both in our country tion, but also on the fight. And Company Members to read deaths were attributed to the about how we look forward. ing through this play. disease and fear-inducing It’s about igniting dialogue and beyond. the face he put on it was his Larry Kramer’s The Normal I am incredibly proud to wel- rumors spread rampantly about how the past informs And despite medical advances, own, embodied in the play’s Heart. Embarrassingly, initially I come an astonishing team of about how people could the present. During our we are far from being a post- chief antagonist Ned Weeks. made the mistake of assuming artists to this production, led acquire it—from drinking Company’s 2010 discussion AIDS generation. According to Kramer has never shied from that it was a dated play. And on stage by one of Chicago’s fountains, toilet seats, or, in about The Normal Heart, it the U.S. Centers for Disease a fight or debate, nor sugar- then I read it, for the first time. finest provocateurs, David the case of hemophiliac AIDS was immediately clear that this Control and Prevention, as of coated any blistering criti- Cromer, embodying Kramer’s Like my colleagues, I was patient Ryan White, from just was a TimeLine story, urgent October 13 there are approxi- cism—whether it was about impassioned agitator, Ned completely knocked out, sitting beside him in class. to tell even in the midst of an mately 1.1 million people living others in the gay community or Weeks. And at the helm, we and not just by its political encouraging new era of civil with HIV/AIDS in the United those outside it. He calls it like What Kramer’s play reminds have another of our city’s fin- vibrancy and call to action. rights advances. States, and almost one-fifth he sees it, and for decades his us in 2013 is that while the est provocateurs, TimeLine’s Larry Kramer crafted one of of them are unaware that crusade has been a relentless play’s setting during the But our ability to do The Associate Artistic Director Nick the great historical dramas they have it. Since the start indictment of silence, inac- 1980s era of misinformation Normal Heart right away was Bowling, once again infusing of the 20th Century, brim- of the epidemic, 1.7 million tion and being closeted. Even may feel distant in some put on hold by the emergence new electricity into a play from ming with heart, courage and Americans have been infected during the heralded Broadway respects, we mustn’t forget of a star-studded reading the past that is about how we humor, and aimed a piercing with HIV and more than run of the play in 2011—26 lens at an era that too many the genesis of the AIDS of the play in New York, fol- get to tomorrow. epidemic and what exacer- lowed by a highly acclaimed 650,000 have died of AIDS. years after his play’s argument mistakenly think of today as began—Kramer was often a Best, dated. It not only retains its bated its escalation. In a 2006 Broadway production—which That’s just our country. interview the playwright said: received the Tony Award for fixture on the sidewalk outside potency since its premiere in Worldwide, there were about “A very strange thing has hap- Best Revival of a Play—and the theatre, handing out flyers 1985, but it’s evolved with age 2.5 million new cases of HIV pened in the post-AIDS gener- rumors of a national tour that into a searing reminder of how in 2011, and about 34.2 ation. I don’t know what to call ultimately never materialized in Playwright Larry Kramer (center) with Joe Mantello (Ned Weeks in the 2011 history takes shape before our million people are living with them; it’s not really post-AIDS, Chicago. So here we are, after Broadway revival) and David Cromer, at the off-Broadway premiere of Ike Holter’s eyes due to the actions—or HIV around the world. In 2010, but let’s call them healthier, patiently waiting, finally getting Hit the Wall in March 2013. (Photo by Bruce Glikas, Broadway.com) inactions—of people like you there were about 1.8 million younger ones … They don’t to bring you a Chicago revival and me. AIDS deaths. Nearly 30 million want to know the history; they of Kramer’s play. The Normal Heart takes us people with AIDS have died back to a time when a fast- since the epidemic began. spreading plague had no name. While the play’s setting may These are numbers you may It was first referred to as a feel distant in some respects, have seen countless times, “rare cancer found in homo- perhaps with numbing effect. sexuals,” then “gay-related we mustn’t forget the genesis Yet strings of facts and fig- immunodeficiency syn- of the AIDS epidemic and what ures—breathtakingly large drome” (GRID). The Centers exacerbated its escalation. as they may be—often don’t Larry Kramer History and Inspirations the playwright the play A Timeline of the Early Years of the AIDS Epidemic drug culture and for his satiric “After the main productions, I found it increasingly difficult assessment that promiscuity to sit through the play any more. It contains too many July 3, 1981 An article head- made it difficult for gay men unhappy memories. ... I wrote it to make people cry: AIDS lined “Rare Cancer Found in 41 Homosexuals” is published to find love. Many in the gay is the saddest thing I’ll ever have to know. I also wrote it to in The New York Times. Larry community criticized Kramer be a love story, in honor of a man I loved who died. I wanted Kramer reads the article and and the novel, but it has never people to see on stage two men who loved each other. I soon holds a meeting in his been out of print. wanted people to see them kiss. I wanted people to see that New York apartment; within gay men in love and gay men suffering and gay men dying are Although Kramer had not a year the Gay Men’s Health just like everyone else.” Crisis (GMHC) will be formed. been very politically active, — Larry Kramer reflecting on The Normal Heart in Reports from the Holocaust, 1994 1982 GMHC is officially founded. Activist and playwright Larry Kramer. a New York Times article on cancer in 41 gay men and the he Normal Heart was first The play premiered in Chicago Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) sudden illness and deaths of holds hearings on what is being arry Kramer was born Tproduced off Broadway in 1987 with an acclaimed friends motivated him to call called gay-related immunodefi- June 25, 1935. He is an at The Public Theater in 1985. production at the Next Theatre, ciency syndrome (GRID). L a meeting in his home. That author, playwright and AIDS Produced by Joseph Papp and which was remounted later that group would become the Gay The Centers for Disease Control activist. The unwanted second directed by Michael Lindsey year at the Ivanhoe Theater. Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). and Prevention (CDC) convenes child of Jewish parents, an at- Hock, it was a hit and ran for Kramer was surprised at the and gives the illness a name— Kramer’s role within the torney and a social worker, he almost a year. It starred Brad positive press, though one gay acquired immunodeficiency organization was often that was in part raised by his elder Davis as Ned Weeks, followed critic accused him of writing a syndrome (AIDS). of public speaker and gadfly, brother Arthur. He and Arthur by Joel Grey. In Los Angeles, it “self-serving revenge play.” 1983 The first AIDS discrimi- a role that rubbed many in starred Richard Dreyfuss and both spoke with distaste of Many of the characters in nation case is brought to court, GMHC and the gay community at the Royal Court in London, their parents, with Kramer The Normal Heart are based in New York, by prominent AIDS the wrong way.