Musical Theatre and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic
Вставка
- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- We examine four of the works that had the most significant impact in bringing the HIV/AIDS epidemic into the mainstream, from Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" to Jonathan Larson's "RENT".
Facebook: The Village Conservatory for Music Theatre
Instagram: @villageconservatory
Donate: www.villageconservatory.com/do...
00:00 Larry Kramer
07:58 Falsettos
15:12 Angels in America
23:19 Rent
Works Cited:
92nd Street Y. “Tony Kushner with Isaac Butler and Dan Kois: Angels in America.” UA-cam video, 1:16:11. May 10, 2018. • Tony Kushner with Isaa...
Wilson, J. (2005). The official Razzie movie guide: Enjoying the best of Hollywood's worst. New York: Warner Books.
Rotter, J. (2017, October 31). Larry Kramer 'Did Not Set Out to Be an Activist At All'. Retrieved July 14, 2020, from www.sfweekly.com/culture/larr...
Mass, L. (n.d.). We must love one another or die: The life and legacies of Larry Kramer.
"Larry Kramer, Pioneering AIDS Activist And Writer, Dies ... - NPR." 27 May. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/05/27/512714.... Accessed 23 Jul. 2020.
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played on: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (London: Souvenir Press, 2011), 90-91.
Timeline: HIV & AIDS," John Pickrell, New Scientist, September 4, 2006
Altman, Lawrence K. “NEW HOMOSEXUAL DISORDER WORRIES HEALTH OFFICIALS.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 11, 1982. www.nytimes.com/1982/05/11/sc....
John Leland, “Twilight of a Difficult Man: Larry Kramer and the Birth of AIDS Activism,” The New York Times (The New York Times, May 19, 2017), www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/ny....
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played on: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic (London: Souvenir Press, 2011), 210.
Michael Specter, Anthony Hiss, and Frances FitzGerald, “Larry Kramer, Public Nuisance,” 2002, www.newyorker.com/magazine/20....
Kramer, Larry (2011) “Please Know” The Normal Heart on Broadway. media.npr.org/assets/artslife.... Retrieved June 24, 2011.
"Ed Koch and the AIDS Crisis: His Greatest Failure." 1 Feb. 2013, nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/.... Accessed 6 Jul. 2020.
Hoffman, Wayne. [1] Tablet October 26, 2016.
Ellen Pall, “The Long-Running Musical of William Finn's Life,” The New York Times (The New York Times, June 14, 1998), www.nytimes.com/1998/06/14/ma....
“March of the Falsettos,” Lortel Archives: Internet Off-Broadway Database, accessed July 4, 2020, www.iobdb.com/production/2327.
“Falsettoland,” Lortel Archives: Internet Off-Broadway Database, accessed July 4, 2020, www.iobdb.com/Production/592.
The Broadway League, “IBDB.com,” IBDB, accessed July 4, 2020, www.ibdb.com/broadway-product....
“RENT - Show History,” Music Theatre International, accessed July 4, 2020, www.mtishows.com/show-history....
The Broadway League, “RENT,” IBDB, accessed July 4, 2020, www.ibdb.com/broadway-product....
"REFLECTIONS: AIDS for Rent - 6289 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans ...." 1 Jan. 2006, www.windycitymediagroup.com/lg.... Accessed 19 Jul. 2020.
"Jonathan Larson's life | The Cultural Critic." theculturalcritic.com/jonatha.... Accessed 19 Jul. 2020.
Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie, “HIV / AIDS,” Our World in Data, April 3, 2018, ourworldindata.org/hiv-aids.
"11 Facts about HIV in Africa | DoSomething.org." www.dosomething.org/facts/11-.... Accessed 6 Jul. 2020. - Розваги
Great video! One note: Marvin is absolutely not bisexual, the whole trilogy is about him accepting himself as a homosexual man.
Exactly. Thank you.
I really don't want to be mean but I want to correct you about a few things regarding falsettos
-the "male writers smh" comment kind of misses the point that Trina being unnamed is INTENTIONAL. We see In trousers from Marvin's eyes and he doesn't really care about her because he's at this point filled with internalized homophobia and mysogyny. It also makes sense that the only woman who has some kind of name is Miss Goldberg and she only has a last name because Marvin's relationship with her was more about her status than being actually personal. Mysogyny is a big theme in the trilogy, March of the falsettos was even originally going to be called "the pettiness of mysogyny" according to Finn. So yeah, it is very intentional, don't you dare come for my boy William Finn like this ever again
2. Marvin is not bisexual he's gay. Any source that says otherwise is incorrect, the reason he has relationships with women is because of the time he's in and because of compulsory heterosexuality. The musical literally tells you this already in In trousers in the song My chsnce to survive the night. We also see him not being comfortable with women and then the song Whizzer going down comes and it feels a lot free-er than the ones before (also notice how many times Whizzer's name is said for someone who doesn't even appear as a character yet. He's clearly more important to Marvin than any other character) and hell, Falsettoland starts with the word "homosexuals" referring to Marvin and Whizzer (and I guess kinda the lesbians too)
That's it great video though!
yes!!!! this!!
the fact that the makers of this video completely ignored this comment when you’re absolutely right and should say it!!! ppl ALWAYS wanna leave misogyny out of the conversation…
i was about to comment this LMAO
Thank you for saying this bc omg 😭😭😭 also set those sails as the most rememberable song?? Crazy talk fr
I think you guys should dive veeeeerrrry deep into "Falsettos" and do an analysis on it. There are so many things to talk about and you can expand on it to make it an hour long. Just a suggestion :)
Falsettos is my favourite musical ever, it’s such an impactful musical and it’s really underrated tbh
I’d rather see a video about why the OG *Annie* movie still holds up but why the movie *A Chorus Line* does not. Time has been kinder to John Huston’s defiant adaptation of Broadway’s bastardization of one of the leading voices of opposition to the New Deal than it has been to Richard Attenborough’s bungling ineptitude in translating a show that broke records on Broadway to the screen. Which one was at the Turner Classic Movies film festival a couple years ago? It wasn’t the one where the girl from *Dallas* sang about her T&A.
Note that Marvin isn’t bisexual, he’s gay
Well done! I'm a gay man in his 70's. I lived through this era. Thank you, there tears still in my eyes
I was born during this era, and I am tired of boomers constantly pissing on the genuine and earned nostalgia that younger gay people have for it. Boomers, independently of sexual orientation, slutted it up and left every generation after them with the bill. And some of us belong to other minority groups besides LGB and are sick and tired of our voices being marginalized both within LGB and within the greater community at large. The time has come to admit gay conservatives and Republicans were right about pretty much everything and our only mistake was not going far enough sooner in order to stop another lost gay generation at the hands of the same medical industrial complex that allowed F@u¢¡ to spread his lies. It was not gay conservatives who demanded lockstep obedience to a very narrow list of tastes, goals, and opinions, it was gay shitlibs. It was not gay conservatives who slutted it up throughout the 1970s. It was gay shitlibs. Gay conservatives were the ones who got Ronald Reagan to oppose the Briggs Initiative in California. It was not gay conservatives who made homosexuality part and parcel with kowtowing to neoliberalism when it failed us like it failed every other minority group in this country. It was gay shitlibs. And it was not gay conservatives demanding the emasculation of femboys and the yeeting of tomboy tits. It was gay shitlibs. You ostracized us before we ever had a chance to ostracize you. And it was not gay conservatives crying “Jew for Hitler“ while turning attacking Israel in the same breath. That was gay shitlibs, and as a Jew, I am very much offended by that comparison. It is racist to the core. It’s as racist as saying “you ain’t black” if you don’t vote for the man who basically made it a crime to be a black man in America. It is saying you do not have the right to your opinion unless you belong to the dominant class. If that is the case, then America is not a free country and will not be a free country until an openly gay Republican takes the oath of office as president.
And don’t you dare bring up Andrew Sullivan as a counterexample because I would gladly trade him for JP Sears in an instant. In spite of that, gay conservatism is the future of both homosexuality and conservatism and by proxy the American experiment.
Tony Kushner is a self-hating Jew and a self-hating homosexual whose work is nothing but long, ponderous messes full of selective history and confessions through projection. He’s dragging Spielberg down in the gutter with him after they tr-nsed Anybodys in *Woke Side Story.* That was unforgivable, and if Stephen Sondheim approved, then he was an Uncle Tom and the only good adaptations of his shows are the ones he hates. Larry Kramer isn’t much better. Frankly, I’m also over Larry McMurtry after his participation in the self-loathing atrocity of *Boreback Mountme,* an IP I wish could be stricken from the name of every record of gay, literary, and movie history like the name of Moses from every Egyptian obelisk and tablet. Gay conservatism is the only option for homosexuals now that homosexuality itself is what needs conserving. If that means another term in the White House for Donald Trump.
Boomers still trying to escape complicity for sticking future generations, including future gay generations, with the bill for their reckless behavior pretty much as soon as they became adults.
hey this is all lighthearted, but in falsettos, marvin broke up with whizzer. during the chess scene, marvin let him win and broke up with him. whizzer declares that he never loved marvin, and that he wouldn’t be with someone like him anymore. that led marvin to go back to trina in a jealous rage.
Thank you!
I adored Larry Kramer. He had a temper, but his anger was righteous. His style of activist work did not belong in GMHC, but Act Up, he was amazing. And I love that he used his professional talent of being a writer to teach the world what he and the gay community in particular were living through. He was loud before, during and after the AIDS crisis. RIP Larry.
Thanks for your essay on HIV/AIDS and its affect on live theatre. I will point out one thing...La Vie Boheme (24:36) takes place at the end of act 1 in Rent, not the top of act 2. Yes, the story is told mostly from Mark's perspective. However, as you yourself mentioned...Jonathan was a str8 white man. Why shouldn't the show be written from his perspective? He was clearly touched by so many of his gay, bi, trans friends...some of whom died before him due to the crisis. Writers tend to write from what they know. Sure, some from what they think they know. But often, it is from personal experiences. So, although Rent now 30 years on is considered a bit dated, it is still a great, catchy musical that allows younger people to understand what happened back then and is still happening now.
I’m Gay as a daisy in May and I agree with Peter Griffin about *Rent.* It is everything wrong with post-Annie musical theatre. I don’t want to see TQ+ propaganda with my musicals any more than I want to see representation of any oppressor classes any more. *Hairspray* and *La Cage* did not cross this line.
This was a very well done video. While I definitely don’t mind the criticism of RENT, I often wonder if Larson would have fixed the issues in the show in its off-broadway version had he not died
I'm surprised this video doesn't have more views, it's super well-done and I learned a lot
I went into this without looking at the comments or view count but now that i'm about finished I'm floored at how little views this got. This was an amazing look into the topic and deserved much more attention and interaction. Thank you for putting in the work to make this!
I'm glad this topic led you to Larry Kramer's legacy.
Today, people live with instead of die from AIDS, almost solely because of his activism and passion.
He's a hero in the truest sense of the word
Larry Kramer’s real legacy outside of a 1978 novel with hate speech as its title is the musical version of *Lost Horizon.*
Wait, isn’t “La Vie Boheme” the end of Act 1?
Yes. It closes the first act.
This is so well done!
DEFINITELY want more videos like this! Keep them coming, guys!
What a great analysis! Deserves more views for sure! Appreciate the research and work!
The video deserves so much more love❤
Well done. Analysis is an intellectual exercise that we do in a classroom setting led by a professor, or at home through a non-fiction book or essay designed to promote that mental process. It's not something we can do through fine or visual arts. We 'experience' theater, film, dance, and music. Exhibit A: those 35 dialogues written by Plato with Socrates as protagonist through dialogue as the medium of choice. Great analysis and examples of logic that we read in college. I defy you to turn any of them into a stage play.
Great video!
damn this was very educational. i watched the entire video, i’m so surprised this doesn’t have more views. thank you for this
Brilliant!
Awesome video!! Great analyses!!
I just came upon your channel,
while I was browsing, and I’m glad that I found this particular video!!
I know that it’s not a “musical,”
“but then again, neither are “Angels in America,”/“The Normal Heart,”) But it is a Wonderful, Terrence McNally play, So if you don’t mind, could suggest an “honorable mention,” in 1994’s “Love, Valor, Compassion?”
Also, it would be great, if you can do another video, basically, like this one, but concentrate on how the Broadway cares community, helped in so many ways during, and since the
H.I.V./ A.I.D.S.
epidemic/pandemic first began.
Better still, could you do a video, on the beautiful plays/musicals that focus on H.I.V./A.I.D.S., and concentrate on how the Broadway community came together, with the B.C./ E.F.A. (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS), and HIV/AIDS crisis, in the 80s and 90s especially?!
Many other plays, musicals,
we’re written because of the AIDS crisis, and to raise money to provide, especially at the beginning, Anything, and Everything that AIDS victims needed. (Considering Reagan & his posse, treated HIV/AIDS like a joke,…and couldn’t even even Say, HIV or AIDS!! 🤬
Hopefully find interviews w/cast, crew members, producers, directors, Et Al,
that tell the stories, how those plays or musicals came to be, and how their roles affected them, because of the AIDS crisis.
Considering that they all were burying friends,…or maybe even burying their lovers, Et Al, it must have been agony.
All of them, their Friends, these beautiful, talented souls, were dying, and it was happening Fast.
At the same time, many of them, were HIV positive, or had full-blown AIDS, themselves.
The plays/musicals that you mentioned are All perfect examples, but there are many more stories to tell, I’m sure!
Thanks for reading my Long text!! 🙏🏽 😂 🤷🏻♀️ ☺️
Really tho, Best Wishes on Your Channel!!
29:04 I disagree with your point here, yes Jonathan Larson was a straight white man as you said, but it’s said he based most of his characters and things in Rent of people that he knew and experiences he had as a struggling writer living a bohemian lifestyle. I get your point, but I think it’s great that he is able to highlight the stories of others as a writer in his way, and still provides great representation even if it’s not the absolute perfect version. Definitely good representation for the 90’s anyway
Gays owe h3ts who push TQ+ cult propaganda nothing. They owe gays reparations. I liked *Rent* better under its original title: *La Boheme.*
Give me Jerry Herman and the brothers Sherman any day over this boomer-doomer-gloomer claptrap. And notice how none of Jonathan Larson’s work on *Sesame Street* is ever truly remembered fondly the way the music of the likes of Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss is by OG fans of that show. Everybody remembers the theme song, “Rubber Duckie,” “C is for Cookie,” “Doin’ the Pigeon,” “One of these Things is Not Like the Other,” “People in Your Neighborhood,” “I Love Trash,” “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ,” and “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon.” Those are almost as memorable as the classic Disney songs. I cannot name one Jonathan Larson composition for that show, and I’m sure I would forget about it pretty much instantly after somebody pointed one out. And if Howard Ashman hadn’t died (he must have taken AZT if he went that far downhill that fast), he would have still been writing lyrics to one great show after another.
first off, MARVIN IS NOT BISEXUAL. IN TROUSERS IS NOT ABOUT MARVIN BEING BISEXUAL! many of the parts that seem to imply that are actually just dealing with his motherly issues and therefore his yearning for unconditional love, (from a wife and kids) and his shame regarding his own sexuality and how he tries to repress it by convincing himself to love women.... Marvin is gay full stop. ALSO IN TROUSERS IS NOT FORGETTABLE OR MID! sure its abstract and hard to understand, but that's one of the great joys of it. sure, if you listen once and move on you may not think much of it but the more time u put into understanding it the more beautiful it becomes, piece after piece unfolding. Its incredibly personal because it's so abstract that one line could mean many things, and it can mean something personal or relatable to you. Sure its juvenile and lacking in experience, but its also completely raw, and sometimes some of the first things to come out are some of the best, because theyre straight from the heart, no expectations.
looks interesting
Angels in America is great. There’s nothing wrong with how the people of color is written. It’s amazing how people jump on the ban wagon saying the show isn’t good. As a Gay Black Man, the show spoke to me, as it spoke to many. The “controversy” levied at Rent and Larson is Liberal BS. (And I’m a Liberal!). So it doesn’t cover EVERY aspect of Aids - personal stories and political - a show shouldn’t have to cover everything that comes with a specific topic.
Get off your soap box… Rent is good. And it will stay that, with me.
As a RENThead, there are 8 main characters. And La Vie Boheme is at the end of the FIRST act….
If you hate Rent so much, don’t cover it, cause your bias is heavily evident and I’d rather hear non-bias opinions… and do your research about Jonathan Larson… I love rent but I hate your thoughts on it.
I was surprised to discover how many people hate rent. I personally love it but to each their own ig 🤷♀️
Sometimes the haters are right. See also: Julie Andrews’ film debut, an awful film of an awful book by an awful person that made Walt Disney an awful lot of money made into an even more awful stage show and an even more awful sequel wasting a wonderful actress from a wonderful movie called *Bedknobs and Broomsticks.*
So gilbert and sulivan are what to you? A little pony show? To assume that these half bit culture clips are the pinnacle of American theater is tantamount to saying that Kanye West invented philosophy. They were important to shed light on the epidemic blighting the condom hating community, but Mikado is real theater that cultural puff pieces don't come close to no matter how whiney or reductionist their authors.
Larson wrote rent through the prospective of his own life, thats why Mimi and Roger are the main couple, and its why they are such a disfunctional couple that really shouldn't be together. He also saw people he cared about die from this disease, his best friend who he cared about the most got HIV, i feel like Mimi not dying in the end was his own way of coping and giving some hope in a time when it was hard to find. Im sure that's not a perfect representation, but i dont think that's what he was going for.
That’s why the show was and is problematic and the movie was doomed to failure because of the source material.
Great video!