AIDS activist, author, playwright Larry
Kramer is writing a play that deals in part with the coronavirus
pandemic.
The 84-year-old Kramer co-founded the
Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in the early 1980s as a response to
the government's slow response to the AIDS epidemic. He protested the
government's inaction to the crisis and apathy toward the victims of
the plague with the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
(ACT UP) in 1987. ACT UP confronted politicians to bring about needed
changes in policies.
Kramer is best known for writing The
Normal Heart, a 1985 play that focuses on the rise of the
HIV/AIDS crisis in New York.
In a recent The
New York Times piece, Kramer said that he's working on a new
play, titled An Army of Lovers Must Not Die, about “gay
people having to live through three plagues.”
The Times explained that the
three plagues are HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and “the decline of the human
body – specifically, a broken leg that Mr, Kramer, 84, suffered
last April, when he fell in his apartment and lay on the floor until
his home attendant arrived hours later.”
Kramer added that he is weathering the
coronavirus pandemic by isolating himself in his Greenwich Village
apartment.