The Normal Heart and the Destiny of Me

Larry Kramer was an outspoken advocate in the 1980s, the early days of the AIDS epidemic. While many in the gay community were caught up in celebrating hard-fought sexual freedoms, Kramer argued that these freedoms must be curtailed somehow to protect against biological disease. This position, unfortunately, won him scorn from many fellow gays. However, he wrote this award-winning play in 1985 to advocate for his position while shining the light on what it was like to be gay in this era. Without a doubt, this play humanized the entire confusing experience and teaches us still how to live under threat of disease.In this work, Ned Weeks, the main protagonist, symbolizes Kramer’s work in the gay community. Ned is a writer who organizes to bring the AIDS agenda to the public’s mind. He shines a light on the hypocrisy of how few resources and publicity are devoted to this epidemic when compared to other recent healthcare scares (like the 1982 Tylenol crisis). Though his organizing efforts are successful, he is pushed out of leadership because he is seen as too radical. Ned simply advocates that the value of life amidst disease should trump any freedoms.The characters in the play are based on historical figures in Kramer’s life experiences. There is love. There is death. The characters stand out. Ever-moving, they humanize the conflicting cultural forces at play. In 2011, HBO filmed this play and put it on the television. This film version even won kudos from then-president Obama. If you prefer to see plays instead of read them, this film is still available for rental.It is simultaneously an engaging play and a piece of history. Kramer went on to continue to organize his advocacy and won hard-fought recognition of the AIDS crisis. (Remember, Reagan famously didn’t utter the word “AIDS” until the seventh year of his presidency.) He wrote a follow-up play The Destiny of Me which also won awards. The AIDS epidemic still rages globally despite vaccine and pharmacological efforts. The gay community has continued to win hard-fought rights and acceptance into wider American society.The play closes on a moving note. It calls us to remember our common humanity amidst crisis – something too easy to forget. I write this review in the midst of another pandemic, and many of the lessons of the AIDS pandemic have been forgotten today. We still attack each other because masks – gasp! – are too restrictive to save human lives. As with Ned, people are pushed away for advocating sane public health measures. We cannot and should not forget the last scene in this book, for it repeats itself in our present history. Likewise, we cannot and should not forget the lives of a marginalized group targeted by biologic agents, for one day, it might be all of us. All this to say, this play has broad relevance to present readers, not just the LGBTQ+ community.

If you’re puzzling over which edition of “The Normal Heart” to purchase, this is it. In addition to the script for Larry Kramer’s masterpiece about the early years of the AIDS plague (to use Kramer’s terminology) when homosexual men were one of the disease’s primary victim groups, this volume includes a sequel of sorts, “The Destiny of Me.” Both plays center on AIDS activist Ned Weeks, a founding member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). “The Normal Heart” is clearly autobiographical, with Ned being a stand-in for Kramer. In interviews (many of them accessible on YouTube), Kramer acknowledges that all the characters are based on very specific real people and asserts that all of their speeches are very much in the words he remembers hearing them utter. In this regard—that is, in the compiling of documented speech and reshaping it for dramatic effect—“The Normal Heart” has more in common with Moises Kaufman’s “The Laramie Project” (and possibly Miller’s “The Crucible”) than with Kramer’s own sequel.“The Destiny of Me” could not be classified as “documentarian.” It is more of a memory play, abstract bordering on fantasy. Truth is found in the authentic and honest expression of feelings, not in the verifiability of facts. And here, psychoanalysis plays a key role in the filtering and shaping of such truths. All that considered, it’s hard to imagine how this play would be staged, but in his note About the Production, Kramer expresses his confidence in the inventiveness of theater professionals to come up with something that will work. In general, “The Destiny of Me” reminds me of Wilder’s “Our Town” (minus the sentimentality) and O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Human and spatial boundaries are infirm and permeable. The play presents Ned several years after being ousted from GMHC (an event that served as the climax in “The Normal Heart”) and sometime after launching Act-Up, an activist organization committed to pressuring governmental agencies and pharmaceutical companies into fast-tracking drug trials. Ned is in hospital receiving an experimental treatment for his HIV/AIDS. Death is clearly the elephant in the room. And whenever death hovers people tend to look at the entire arc of their lives and ponder the ”what ifs” and “if onlys.” Ned not only invokes his brother Ben and their parents (Richard and Rena), he also conjures up his adolescent self (played by another actor and who goes by the name Alexander) to help him better interrogate his familial tormentors. There is much finger-pointing, bemoaning the absence of love, and venting of resentments. In the end only one relationship experiences any significant healing, that of the two brothers (a healing process that was only beginning, and still quite fragile, at the end of “The Normal Heart”). Death has moved in closer, but Ned is very much alive and still fighting at the end of the play. As Kramer notes in his Introduction, “The deathbed play remains to be written; now I have a chance to write a trilogy.” Alas, that scene remains undocumented and was destined to be played off stage, a very private closet drama.Playwright Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”) provided an Introduction to the volume that is tender and insightful and another reason to choose this edition over any others available.

The rating and description are mainly for the first of these two plays, "The Normal Heart," which is Kramer's angry and heart-wrenching account of the social response to AIDS in the early years of its appearance in New York. A long-time admirer of Randy Shilts' book "And the band played on" I found this to be a condensed, angrier, and more impassioned companion piece; in fact I'm assigning it as the first of three pieces on AIDS in a course I've developed on disease narratives. Kramer's play is the artist/playwright/care-giver/activist's perspective; Shilts (excerpts only) will be the journalistic viewpoint and Abraham Verghese's "My own country" rounds it out with a doctor's account."The Destiny of Me," while doubtless brilliant and troubling in it's own way, did not quite do it for me maybe because it was a much more personal story that I couldn't relate to. I still think it's worth a read.. but am glad that I'd decided on the former for the course. My other choice would have been "Angels in America" by Tony Kushner but ultimately I went with Kramer's play not because as it's closer to the events as they happened. What's really shocking in an eye-opening way reading this play several decades since it was written is the fact that the word AIDS does not even make an appearance once! And yet it's obvious what's being talked about. Anybody interested in human behavior, in sickness & how to cope with the fears that come with uncertainty or in this case, sheer ignorance, should read this and be outraged.

Two of the best, world-changing plays that shall forever remain classics of the most revelationaryand revolutionary status. Bold, raw, witty andprofound.

da noi non molto famoso, infatti ho dovuto leggerlo direttamente in lingua originale, Larry Kramer è da oltre 40 anni un drammaturgo, sceneggiatore, attivista gay e giornalista delle scena americana.Questa edizione comprende le sue 2 opere The normal heart e The Destiny of me (che sarebbe il seguito della prima).Entrambe rappresentate con successo a teatro, anche se la prima ebbe più fortuna. Recentemente Ryan Murphy ne ha tratto un film per la televisione via cavo HBO con cast stellare. Interessante come questa piece possa essere un documento di quegli anni e in particolare di quel periodo.

The plays themselves are amazing but this book gives you so much more insight to the background and thoughts going on with some great info on the shows. Felt almost like a textbook on theatre!

Esse livro e um obra de arte e um grande livro na luta contra a homofobia . Mais do que recomendado!