Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS

by David Roman

Acts of Intervention examines the ways that gay men have used theatre and performance to intervene in the AIDS crisis. It discusses dramatic texts and public performances―from cabarets and candlelight vigils to full-scale Broadway productions such as Angels in America and Rent―that have shaped, and been shaped by, the history of AIDS in national, regional, and local contexts. Román examines mainstream as well as alternative and activist forms of theatre, including solo performance, community-based projects, mixed-media events, activist demonstrations, and AIDS educational theatre initiatives.

Acts of Intervention traces the ways in which performance and theater have participated in and informed the larger cultural politics of race, sexuality, citizenship, and AIDS in the United States during the last fifteen years. The book discusses not only how the theater has provided a forum for gay male response to the epidemic but also the degree to which those responses have in turn shaped the ideological formulation of AIDS. Román offers a new method for mapping the relation between AIDS and representation by combining interpretive strategies from performance theory, gay and lesbian studies, critical race discourse, and cultural studies.

This book is dedicated to writing the history of theatrical interventions in the AIDS epidemic, including performances whose official history has been largely neglected or forgotten. Because many early performances about AIDS left little or no documentation, the task of constructing an AIDS theatre historiography confronts immediate problems and limitations.

Acts of Intervention argues that the history of AIDS performance is located at the juncture of memory and disappearance, of mourning and survival, of representation and its impossibility in the context of epidemic loss.

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Activism, Queer

384 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

Reviews

[John Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only does Roman write about theater, but he also writes about what was going on historically when the plays were written and performed. Those passages refreshed my memory, or I learned something new. At one point I chuckled because Larry Craig was mentioned. He of the infamous bathroom scandal in 2007.

Along with the writing about famous and known plays, Roman devotes chapters on performances and plays about people of color with AIDS and HIV.

While reading the book, I was reminded of a play I did, in 1987, entitled "Razor Music" by Jerome Moskowitz. It dealt with two guys, one HIV-positive, the other HIV-negative. It was at a junior college. The instructor overseeing the performance was nervous about the subject matter. He thought the audience was jittery about the possibility of myself and the other actor kissing. The next year the instructor directed a production of "The Normal Heart". Guess he got over himself.

I recommend the book for anyone in theater, or likes theater. Also a refresher or study of history during the early years of AIDS.

[Jaykumar B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman's text is probably one the best ones I've on AIDS performances...