I know this is a reading club but I thought I'd share about my trip to the theatre (read: "thee-ah-tuh"):
I saw The Normal Heart last night with Nathan and am emotionally drained. It's written by the man who started AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and the Gay Men's Health Crisis. It's basically a fictionalized account of his founding of ACT UP. It was first produced in 1985 and was/still is a really rage-filled indictment of the apathy of the government, the NY Times, the mayor of NYC, the public, the attitude of gay men towards sex/"liberation," etc. The protagonist is this really angry, "out" writer who can't get enough of his closeted friends to do their part or subscribe to his "radical" methods. So he ends up being kicked off the board of the organization he himsef started. Meanwhile, of course, 40 of his friends have died and his lover is sick and undergoing the experimental-hopeless-chemotherapy-attempts-at-treatment that the only empathetic doctor in city is offering.
The walls of the stage were pretty plain white, except that they had quotes, statistics, and news headlines outlined on them faintly. And between scenes, when the lights went down, projectors would shine the names of all of the people who had been diagnosed with and killed by AIDS up to that point in the play's time setting onto the walls. By the end (about 1984) the list covered the whole stage, and then after about ten seconds four more columns appeared on the walls on either side of the ground seating. I've always thought that this was a major blind spot for me and I'm going try to start learning about the history of HIV/AIDS and about organizations in NYC. There was a time that I thought about volunteering at Housing Works Bookstore, which maybe I could do this summer on some evenings and/or weekends.
Wow, I bet that was very interesting and eye-opening. I would love to see that, and learn more about the history of HIV and about its treatment. This may be like a super obvious and annoying suggestion, but in the rare chance that you haven't seen it, you should watch the movie Philadelphia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_(film). It stars Tom Hanks as an attorney living with AIDS who is wrongfully terminated because of his illness/orientation, and Denzel Washington plays his reluctant, homophobic lawyer in the lawsuit. It's a really great movie!
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