By Christopher Wallenberg
With this defiant play of outspoken agitprop, Kramer, who in 1987 co-founded the radical AIDS activist group ACT-UP, gave voice to a minority group that had been violently discriminated against for hundreds of years and that was beginning to suffer from a devastating plague the likes of which had never been seen. "There's this bogeyman out there that's killing people. And there's no real medical information for what's going on," Parsons says. "We can't see it, but we see what happens; there's death coming from it, but what is it? And nobody can be very specific about exactly how this thing is happening. And people don't know how to stop it and how to even protect yourself from it."
In the early days of the epidemic, Kramer had helped establish the Gay Men's Health Crisis, but later criticized the group for their tactics, which he saw as impotent and tepid in response to a seemingly indifferent government. (The character of Ned works for a similar organization in the play.) Kramer's ACT-UP became one of the most outspoken and effective direct action groups fighting the AIDS crisis, staging dramatic and creative protests that were widely covered by the national media. (In 1989, seven members infiltrated the New York Stock Exchange and chained themselves to a VIP balcony to protest the high price of AZT, the only approved AIDS drug at the time.)
"I had read the play several times before I started to realize that these very articulate and well-thought-out arguments from other characters to Ned, about what Ned is saying, were also written by Larry. And obviously I sound like an idiot when I say that out loud," says Parsons, with charming self-deprecation. "But I am so impressed with his ability to present such cogent arguments from diametrically opposed sides of these issues — and all coming from the same mind."
20 Apr 2011
Parsons on "The Big Bang Theory."
photo by Cliff Lipson, CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Parsons points out that in his character's first scene in The Normal Heart, during a meeting of activists as the epidemic is beginning to unfold, Tommy says that "he's interested in setting up a telephone hotline because there are going to be scared patients out there who are going to need information and comforting, who are going to need somebody to talk to and to listen to them and maybe help guide then when they are first diagnosed or first have an onset of symptoms."
To Parsons, it speaks to a real "care-taking side" to Tommy's personality. "He obviously has gifts in that area and feels a calling towards that area. And I don't think it's too armchair psychologist to say that providing comfort to others obviously provides him some comfort in this scary time of uncertainty. This is something that he can do — and he feels that he can do it well — helping to provide information and comfort to those who are scared and sick. He is very interested in kind of getting down and dirty with it. Whatever happens or however we solve this crisis, we have to 'take care of these people and 'and hold the dying patient,' as he says."
Parsons says that Tommy's way of coping with the crisis "just so happens to be a very practical way of dealing with the situation that's also eminently and immediately useful. Tommy is trying to make his own difference in a way that has an immediate effect. It can provide immediate comfort; it can provide immediate assistance. And I think audiences will connect with that."
In his own life, Parsons says that he personally copes with challenges or hurdles in life in a similar manner as Tommy. "I really like to be able to take action. The sitting around and the worrying is just dismal — and frankly it can send you into a catatonic state. His way of coping is to just keep moving. But I don't know that [Tommy's way of coping] is any less neurotic. But I do think that it's more visibly, immediately useful in a way. You see that something's actually getting done."
Continued...
