1. 12/06/2009 10:42Nashville Stories - Keeping Up the Fight - page 1
Page 1 of 2http://www.nashvillescene.com/2005-06-09/stories/keeping-up-the-fight/
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Keeping Up the Fight
With its upcoming production, Rhubarb Theatre Company
hopes to dissolve our complacency about AIDS
Martin Brady
Published on June 09, 2005
The Normal Heart
June 9-25 at
Darkhorse Theater
In 1985, when Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart debuted at New York's
Public Theater, AIDS was still very much a four-letter word. That acclaimed
production helped to alert a community that refused to believe it was in
danger, attempted to galvanize a bureaucracy that refused to listen, and
even focused some glaring light on then-President Reagan, who refused to
even utter the word "AIDS." Kramer's play features interesting contemporary
characters caught amid a growing and confounding mystery, with a
protagonist, Ned Weeks, who strives to raise public awareness of the
disease even as he watches friends succumbing to its ravages. The Normal
Heart was revived in New York last year, and now Nashville's Rhubarb
Theatre Company will present the local premiere at the Darkhorse Theater
for a three-week run opening June 9.
"I fell in love with this play nearly 20 years ago," says director Julie
Alexander, who lived both in New York and San Francisco during the
frightening formative years of the AIDS epidemic. "I had a lot of close
friends die from AIDS. I remember people were talking about this weird
disease. People were afraid, but no one knew exactly what to be afraid of. I
remember all the paranoia of the era."
Kramer's own activism—as co-founder of ACT UP and the Greenwich Village-
based Gay Men's Health Crisis, and as author of the recent book The
Tragedy of Today's Gays—continues to this day. While AIDS has seemingly
faded from the public consciousness, the fact is that more than 35 million
people worldwide are reported to be living with the HIV virus. Michael
Specter's May 23, 2005, New Yorker article, updating developments on the
HIV/AIDS front, points out that "AIDS has not disappeared in America; there
are more than forty thousand new H.I.V. infections each year.... The
numbers have remained remarkably high especially among black gay men,
minority women and drug addicts who share needles."
In the U.S., AIDS has receded as a perceived public threat and a cause for
philanthropy and political discourse. A lot of Americans think AIDS isn't their
problem, since the majority of the people infected are in Africa or other
areas of the world, thus perpetuating the same moral stigma and lack of
political leadership that allowed it to spread out of control in the first place.
"Larry Kramer was driven by his passion and his anger," says Alexander,
who sees The Normal Heartas both a vital historical drama and cautionary
tale for the contemporary world. "He scared people into action. ACT UP was
an aggressive activist group. The play's protagonist, Ned Weeks, is Larry
Kramer, and the other characters are composites of people he knew. AIDS
didn't receive serious news coverage until two years into the disease. If
everybody had stepped up to the plate at the time, lives might've been
saved. Specifically, this play is about the reason why people weren't helped
back then. It's about red tape and fear, and the labeling of AIDS as a gay
curse."
Alexander's Rhubarb Theatre is one of Nashville's more promising
community theater groups. The company's previous productions—2003's
Last Summer at Bluefish Cove and 2004's Birds in Church—well fulfilled its
stated mission to produce challenging theater that focuses on issues of
diversity and fosters understanding, and does so with urban sophistication.
Alexander has gathered together a solid local cast, including veterans like
Clay Hillwig, Michael Roark and Pat Rulon, with Scott Douglas taking the
lead role. As an added fillip, Alexander has secured the involvement of half a
dozen noteworthy locals who will make cameo appearances throughout the
run, including Nashville CARES executive director Joe Interrante, Nashville
Scene publisher Chris Ferrell, TV news anchor Demetria Kalodimos,
attorney/activist Abby Rubenfeld, pro bono attorney Lucinda Smith and
endocrinologist Stephan C. Sharp.
"I decided to become involved in this project because I think it is so very
important that this play be done in Nashville," Rubenfeld says. "The HIV
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2. 12/06/2009 10:42Nashville Stories - Keeping Up the Fight - page 1
Page 2 of 2http://www.nashvillescene.com/2005-06-09/stories/keeping-up-the-fight/
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epidemic has affected us, devastated our world, for more than 20 years, and
people are beginning to become too complacent about it again. In some
ways, it feels like we are reliving some of the denial and neglect that we
experienced in the '80s." Rubenfeld was working for a national gay legal
organization in New York City at that time, and she knows Kramer.
"HIV began to dominate my life and my work," she continues. "I literally lost
count of the friends, colleagues, clients and acquaintances who died from
this disease. My first boyfriend from junior high was one of the early deaths
in 1984, when nurses still pushed food trays across the floor to AIDS
patients because they were so afraid of catching it.
"Being involved in this play brings back bad memories and very sad feelings
for me—but it also brings me joy and hope to know that so much has
changed in terms of treatment and care and research, and that some
wonderful people are still working hard to keep focus on the disease and to
educate people so a time will come when we can truly forget it."
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