Staging the Plague

The 1980s AIDS crisis claimed the lives of many poeple, most of whom were gay men. Many plays have been written in response to the epidemic. This thesis looks at three of these plays: As Is, The Normal Heart and Angels in America. While the plays are vastly different in their approach to the epidemic, they all attempt to connect with the audience in order to influence them. Each playwright uses the Aristotelian ideas of catharsis, an emotional purgation that is the result of pity and fear. Furthermore, a few common elements of AIDS drama can be discerned: reaffirming love and romance, loss and death, and camp. Together with the author's influences and viewpoints regarding the epidemic, these elements work towards catharsis. While not all three plays are, in the end, Aristotelian tragedies, the AIDS epidemic is in itself cathartic. The pity and fear experiences in real life made vieweing and AIDS play a cathartic experience for many.