The Normal Heart

The Normal Heart
Cover of the paperback edition released by Plume in October 1985
Written by	Larry Kramer
Date premiered	April 21, 1985 April 19, 2011 (revival)
Place premiered	The Public Theater New York City, New York, United States
Original language	English
Subject	The rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York City
Genre	Drama
Setting	New York City, New York, United States

April 21, 1985

The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer.

It focuses on the rise of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group. Ned prefers loud public confrontations to the calmer, more private strategies favored by his associates, friends, and closeted lover Felix Turner. Their differences of opinion lead to frequent arguments that threaten to undermine their mutual goal.

After a successful 1985 Off-Broadway production at The Public Theater, the play was revived in Los Angeles and London and again Off-Broadway in 2004. A Broadway debut opened in April 2011.

During the early 1980s, Jewish-American writer and gay activist Ned Weeks struggles to pull together an organization focused on raising awareness about the fact that an unidentified disease is killing off an oddly specific group of people: gay men largely in New York City. Dr. Emma Brookner, a physician and survivor of polio, as a consequence of which she is using a wheelchair, is the most experienced with this strange new outbreak and bemoans the lack of medical knowledge on the illness, encouraging the abstinence of gay men for their own safety, since it is unknown yet even how the disease is spread. Ned, a patient and friend of Brookner, calls upon his lawyer brother, Ben, to help fund his crisis organization; however, Ben's attitude toward his brother is to give merely passive support, ultimately exposing his apparent homophobia. For the first time in his life, meanwhile, Ned falls in love, beginning a relationship with New York Times writer Felix Turner.

The increasing death toll raises the unknown illness, now believed to be caused by a virus, to the status of an epidemic, though the press remains largely silent on the issue. A sense of urgency guides Ned who realizes that Ben is more interested in buying a two-million-dollar house than in backing Ned's activism. Ned explosively breaks off ties to his brother until Ben can fully accept Ned and his homosexuality. Ned next looks to Mayor Ed Koch's administration for aid in financing research about the epidemic that is quickly killing off hundreds of gay men, including some of Ned's personal friends.