The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays Read Online Free PDF

America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945,
by David S. Wyman, Pantheon Books, 1984.
    For encouraging, challenging, inspiring, and teaching me—for caring—I am exceptionally indebted to Gail Merrifield, the Director of Plays at the New York Shakespeare Festival, as I am to this remarkable organization’s Literary Manager, Bill Hart.
    Indeed, there is not a person at the New York Shakespeare Festival to whom I cannot say, Thank you.
    There are no words splendid enough to contain and convey what Joseph Papp has meant to me, and to this play.
    There are many people who lived this play, who lived these years, and who live no more. I miss them.
    —Larry Kramer

The original New York production of
The Normal Heart
opened on April 21, 1985 at the Public Theater in New York City, New York; a New York Shakespeare Festival Production, it was produced by Joseph Papp. It had the following cast:
    Cast of Characters
    (
in order of appearance
)
    Craig Donner      Michael Santoro
    Mickey Marcus      Robert Dorfman
    Ned Weeks      Brad Davis
    David      Lawrence Lott
    Dr. Emma Brookner      Concetta Tomei
    Bruce Niles      David Allen Brooks
    Felix Turner      D. W. Moffett
    Ben Weeks      Phillip Richard Allen
    Tommy Boatwright      William DeAcutis
    Hiram Keebler      Lawrence Lott
    Grady      Micbael Santoro
    Examining Doctor      Lawrence Lott
    Orderly      Lawrence Lott
    Orderly      Michael Santoro
    Director      Michael Lindsay-Hogg
    Scenery      Eugene Lee and Keith Raywood
    Lighting      Natasha Katz
    Costumes      Bill Walker
    Associate Producer      Jason Steven Cohen
    The action of this play takes place between July 1981 and
    May 1984 in New York City.

Scenes and Approximate Dates

About the Production
    The New York Shakespeare Festival production at the Public Theater was conceived as exceptionally simple. Little furniture was used: a few wooden office chairs, a desk, a table, a sofa, and an old battered hospital gurney that found service as an examining table, a bench in City Hall, and a place for coats in the organization’s old office. As the furniture found itself doing double-duty in different scenes, so did the doorways built into the set’s back wall. In many instances, the actors used the theater itself for entrances and exits.
    The walls of the set, made of construction-site plywood, were whitewashed. Everywhere possible, on this set and upon the theater walls too, facts and figures and names were painted, in black, simple lettering.
    Here are some of the things we painted on our walls:
    1. Principal place was given to the latest total number of AIDS cases nationally:____________AND COUNTING. (For example, on August 1, 1985, the figure read 12,062.)
    As the Centers for Disease Control revise all figures regularly, so did we, crossing out old numbers and placing the new figure just beneath it.
    2. This was also done for states and major cities.
    3. EPIDEMIC OFFICIALLY DECLARED JUNE 5, 1981.
    4. MAYOR KOCH: $75,000—MAYOR FEINSTEIN: $16,000,000. (For public education and community services.)
    5. “TWO MILLION AMERICANS ARE INFECTED—ALMOST 10 TIMES THE OFFICIAL ESTIMATES”—Dr. Robert Gallo, London
Observer,
April 7, 1985.
    6. The number of cases in children.
    7. The number of cases in gays and the number of cases in straights, calculated by subtracting the gay and bisexual number from the total CDC figure.
    8. The total number of articles on the epidemic written by the following newspapers during the first ten months of 1984:
    The
San Francisco Chronicle
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163
    The
New York Times
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
    The
Los Angeles Times
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
    The
Washington Post
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
    9. During the first nineteen