Ryan O'Connell

Directed by Emmy Award-winning director Paris Barclay, this presentation, the first after Kramer's death, is also the first time the Tony Award-winning play features a predominately BIPOC and LGBTQ cast. First staged in New York City in 1985 at The Public Theater, THE NORMAL HEART went on to become the longest running play there. Dealing with the painful experiences of the early days of the AIDS crisis when everything was still mysterious, the play dramatizes the struggle among gay men over which strategies would save their lives. Larry Kramer was a distinguished novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, and a pioneering AIDS activist. In 1982, he co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, and then in 1987, he founded ACT UP. He died at the age of eighty-four in May, 2020. He is survived by his husband, David Webster.