‘The parallels are frightening.’ Classic play about AIDS sheds light on current pandemic.
The parallels were too compelling.
A terrifying communicable disease. Denial. Disinformation. Shame. Even fights with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
So when Lexington’s ActOut Theatre Group was trying to decide on its next production, two years of the COVID pandemic made them turn back to the first one many of us lived through — AIDS — and the first play that conveyed the rage and terror of that time, Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart.”
“We picked it because it was a classic play and we picked it because it was very, very parallel to things going on with COVID,” said Marty Wayman, who’s directing the ActOut production that opens April 1 at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center. “The parallels are frightening.”
Wayman was the assistant director to the late Barry Williams when he directed “The Normal Heart” in 1986 for Actors Guild of Lexington. The play was bold and breathtaking, focusing on a group of gay men as they navigated the early days of the AIDS crisis, when a diagnosis was a death sentence and cure was nowhere in sight.
“First of all, I think a lot of people understand that it’s an important part of everyone’s history, not just LGBTQ, especially when you look and see how history has repeated itself,” Wayman said. “There are parts that are very funny, it’s very passionate. It’s a passionate group of people trying to make a difference in the world.”
And yes, way back in 1988, Kramer, a playwright who founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and Act Up, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, took on the face of that government inaction — Fauci, then a federal researcher. When Kramer died in 2020, the New York Times recalled his open letter to the San Francisco Examiner in 1988 calling out Fauci. “Your refusal to hear the screams of AIDS activists early in the crisis resulted in the deaths of thousands of Queers. Your present inaction is causing today’s increase in HIV infection outside of the Queer community.”
But Fauci reached out Kramer, and they later became friends. (It seems doubtful that will be the case with a similar tempestuous relationship between Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Fauci that’s been going on since COVID began.)
Research finally found a way if not to cure AIDS, then to manage the HIV virus before it turned to full-blown AIDS. On April 8, after the performance of “The Normal Heart,” a group of medical experts from the University of Kentucky and AIDS Volunteers of Lexington (AVOL) will hold a conversation on the latest treatments and advances in the fight to cure HIV and AIDS.
Flashbacks
But all that pushing for more and better research helped the much faster response to COVID, said Jeff Jones, a public health expert in Savannah, Ga., who went to UK. He wrote his dissertation on the history of gay Lexington from 1930-99.
“We have 40 years of research for HIV, and that knowledge of HIV and how to treat that virus has given us the knowledge of how to treat the coronavirus,” Jones said. Of course AIDS was far more lethal to its victims in the beginning, with a 100 percent fatality rate.
Lexington’s first case of AIDS was found in 1982. An organization called the Lexington Gay Services Organization worked to get funding for AIDS education in the community, Jones said. At one point, it asked the United Way for money, but because it was too controversial, the United Way said no. “That set a bad tone for a long time,” Jones said.
By 1988, AVOL had started to get community testing and education. “The drag shows, like the Imperial Court, were a big source of funding,” Jones said.
By 1990, Kentucky had passed an AIDS omnibus bill to provide some funding for prevention and care. In 1992, Jeffery Wasson, with the help of retired Judge Ernesto Scorsone, sued to get the state Supreme Court to overturn the state sodomy law. And along the way, AIDS became a manageable disease rather than a death sentence.
But many, many people had to die before that happened, many of them alone, shunned by friends and family.
Artist and AIDS activist Bob Morgan welcomes the new production of “The Normal Heart” because at one time, he feared the story of AIDS — those who fought, those who died, those who denied — would be lost.
“There was an effort on many fronts to bury the history of how awful it all was,” he said. “Some survivors too, and the Republicans wanted it go away, but diligent people who came up research and documentaries, books and movies setting the record straight.”
“’The Normal Heart’ is part of that record.
“At the time of his death, lots of people were really tired of Larry Kramer, but my God the man took on the entire political and medical establishment simultaneously and would not let go,” Morgan said. “He was fighting a bitter battle and what he set into motion changed everything — changed how we do medicine, the way we do research, the changed patient-doctor relationship, and he will probably never get the full credit.”
Morgan said when COVID appeared two years ago, he had flashbacks to the 1980s.
“I felt all kinds of weirdness when COVID first hit,” he said. “The panic and paranoia about shopping carts and washing veggies — it was an immediate flashback.” But there was a twist, Morgan said. Many conservatives decided not to follow COVID protocols. “I thought this is the same people that went ballistic witch hunting people with AIDS,” Morgan said. How convenient that now they’ve decided they don’t believe in any of this stuff.”
‘The Normal Heart’
Performed by ActOut Theatre Group
When: April 1-10
Where: Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, 141 E Main St.
Tickets: $25; lexingtonky.gov/black-box-theatre
