Arena Stage’s cast of Larry Kramer’s ‘The Normal Heart’, featuring Luke MacFarlane, Patricia Wettig, and Patrick Breen. Tickets available here
Pictures From a Battlefield
Twent-five years ago, a group of young men and women started an organization called ACT UP to fight an enemy that, at the time, seemed almost unbeatable.
The gay ghetto was a tinderbox by March 1987. Ten thousand New Yorkers had already become sick with AIDS; half were dead. Along Christopher Street you could see the dazed look of the doomed, skeletons and their caregivers alike. There was not even a false-hope pill for doctors to prescribe.
I’m an ungrateful sonofabitch. ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which helped save my life, is 25 years old, and I am going to be 77 years old come June, and I should be grateful, right?
It’s difficult to be grateful when the AIDS plague is worse than ever all over the world and the two organizations I helped found to stop it are, if not no more, then in such pathetic shape as to almost be no more.
It’s hard to blame these remnants of former greatness when the gay population of this country continues to be so passive, so apathetic, so shut-the-fuck-up-with-all-your-message-queen-shit.
The Final Cast for “8”
AFER reports :Emmy and Tony Award winner and two-time Golden Globe Award nominee Ellen Barkin; Tony Award nominee Jayne Houdyshell; Broadway star Kate Shindle; and two-time Tony Award winner Stephen Spinella will appear in the world premiere of “8” on Broadway, joining the previously announced Bob Balaban, Matt Bomer, Campbell Brown, Anthony Edwards, Morgan Freeman, Cheyenne Jackson, Larry Kramer, Christine Lahti, John Lithgow, Rory O’Malley, Rob Reiner, Yeardley Smith and Bradley Whitford. The cast of “8” will also feature Tony Award nominee K. Todd Freeman, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Ken Leung and Ben Rosenfield. Marisa Tomei has had to withdraw from the reading due to a film scheduling conflict.
