[msb-alumni] Larry Kramer, playwright and AIDS activist, dies at 84
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 May 2020 16:24:34 -0400
BlankLarry Kramer, playwright and AIDS activist, dies at 84.
NEW YORK Larry Kramer, the playwright whose angry voice and pen raised
theatergoers'
consciousness about AIDS and roused thousands to militant protests in the early
years
of the epidemic, has died at 84. Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a
biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press. Kramer's
husband,
David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died Wednesday of pneumonia.
We
have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His
anger was
needed at a time when gay men's deaths to AIDS were being ignored by the
American
government, said Elton John in a statement. Kramer, who wrote The Normal Heart
and
founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, lost his lover to
acquired
immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus. He
also
suffered from hepatitis B and received a liver transplant in 2001 because the
virus
had caused liver failure. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his
screenplay
for Women in Love, the 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's novel. It starred
Glenda
Jackson, who won her first Oscar for her performance. He also wrote the 1972
screenplay Lost Horizon, a novel, Faggots, and the plays Sissies' Scrapbook,
The
Furniture of Home, Just Say No and The Destiny of Me, which was a finalist for
the
Pulitzer Prize in 1993. But for many years he was best known for his public
fight to
secure medical treatment, acceptance and civil rights for people with AIDS. He
loudly
told everyone that the gay community was grappling with a plague. Tributes from
the
arts community flooded in Wednesday, with Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter saying
What
an extraordinary writer, what a life. Dan Savage wrote: He ordered us to love
ourselves and each other and to fight for our lives. He was a hero. In 1981,
when
AIDS had not yet acquired its name and only a few dozen people had been
diagnosed
with it, Kramer and a group of his friends in New York City founded Gay Men's
Health
Crisis, one of the first groups in the country to address the epidemic. He
tried to
rouse the gay community with speeches and articles such as 1,112 and Counting,
published in gay newspapers in 1983. Our continued existence as gay men upon
the face
of this earth is at stake, he wrote. Unless we fight for our lives, we shall
die. The
late journalist Randy Shilts, in his best selling account of the AIDS epidemic
And
the Band Played On, called that article inarguably one of the most influential
works
of advocacy journalism of the decade and credited it with crystallizing the
epidemic
into a political movement for the gay community. Kramer lived to see gay
marriage a
reality and married himself in 2013 but never rested. I'm married, he told The
AP.
But that's only part of where we are. AIDS is still decimating us and we still
don't
have protection under the law. Kramer split with GMHC in 1983 after other board
members decided to concentrate on providing support services to people with
AIDS. It
remains one of the largest AIDS-service groups in the country. After leaving
GMHC,
Kramer wrote The Normal Heart, in which a furious young writer not unlike
Kramer
himself battles politicians, society, the media and other gay leaders to bring
attention to the crisis. The play premiered at The Public Theater in April
1985.
Associated Press drama critic Michael Kuchwara called it an angry but
compelling
indictment of a society as well as a subculture for failing to respond
adequately to
the tragedy. A revival in 2011 was almost universally praised by critics and
earned
the best revival Tony. Two actors from it Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey
also
won Tonys. Joe Mantello played the main character of Ned Weeks, the alter ego
of
Kramer. I'm very moved that it moved so many people, he said at the time.
Kramer
often stood outside the theater passing out fliers asking the world to take
action
against HIV/AIDS. Please know that AIDS is a worldwide plague. Please know
there is
no cure, it said. The play was turned into a TV film for HBO in 2014 starring
Mark
Ruffalo, Jonathan Groff, Matt Bomer, Taylor Kitsch, Jim Parsons, Alfred Molina,
Joe
Mantello and Julia Roberts. It won the Emmy for best movie. Kramer stood
onstage in
heavy winter clothing as the statuette was presented to director Ryan Murphy.
The
1992 play The Destiny of Me, continues the story of Weeks from The Normal
Heart.
Weeks, in the hospital for an experimental AIDS treatment, reflects on the
past,
particularly his relationship with his family. His parents and brother appear
to act
out what happened in the past, as does the young Ned, who confronts his older
self.
In 1987, Kramer founded ACT UP, the group that became famous for staging civil
disobedience at places like the Food and Drug Administration, the New York
Stock
Exchange and Burroughs-Wellcome Corp., the maker of the chief anti-AIDS drug,
AZT.
ACT UP's protests helped persuade the FDA to speed the approval of new drugs
and
Burroughs-Wellcome to lower its price for AZT. He also battled and later
reconciled
with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of
Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, who has been leading the national response to the
coronavirus pandemic. This is a very, very sad day. It's the passing of a true
icon,
Fauci told The Associated Press, saying he was glad that he'd recently had a
chance
for a last phone call with Kramer. I had a very long and complicated and
ultimately
wonderful relationship with him over more than three decades, Fauci said. We
went
from adversaries to acquaintances to friends to really, really dear friends.
Kramer
soon relinquished a leadership role in ACT UP, and as support for AIDS research
increased, he found some common ground with health officials whom ACT UP had
bitterly
criticized. Kramer never softened the urgency of his demands. In 2011, he
helped the
American Foundation for Equal Rights mount their play 8 on Broadway about the
legal
battle over same-sex marriage in California. The one nice thing that I seem to
have
acquired, accidentally, is this reputation of everyone afraid of my voice, he
told
The AP in 2015. So I get heard, whether it changes anything or not. One of his
last
projects was the massive two-volume The American People, which chronicled the
history
of gay people in America and took decades to write. I just think it's so
important
that we know our history the history of how badly we're treated and how hard we
have
to fight to get what we deserve, which is equality, he told The AP. At the time
of
his death, Kramer was working on a play called An Army of Lovers, which he was
updating to include the pandemic. At the 2013 Tonys, he was honored with the
Isabelle
Stevenson Award, given to a member of the theater community for philanthropic
or
civic efforts. A few months later, Kramer married his longtime partner,
architect
David Webster, in the intensive care unit of NYU Langone Medical Center, where
Kramer
was recovering from surgery for a bowel obstruction.
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