The Drama of AIDS: My Lasting Connections with Two Plays That Survived the Plague

by Michael Kearns

Overview

"After spending more than a decade in a clumsy tango with my fringe career and my mainstream career, AIDS erupted: the catalyst for me to define myself and begin a journey to achieving an artistry that would resound beyond the soundstages and backlots of Hollywood, embracing a world full of infinite stories." Michael Kearns

In The Drama of AIDS: My Lasting Connection with Two Plays That Survived the Plague, Michael Kearns weaves a remarkable tapestry that casts the theatre as a metaphor for how life unfolds in ways that are both beautiful and theatrical. Kearns shares the real, uncensored story of his intimate relationship with two plays-James Carroll Pickett's Dream Man and Robert Chesley's Jerker-a relationship that has spanned more than twenty years.

First and foremost, Kearns writes about the theatre and its transformative powers. His is a book about putting on a show; it is a book about loss and love; it is a book about being an openly gay and publicly HIV-positive artist during the years when AIDS has unabatedly affected the world stage, literally and figuratively. It is a book about the brotherhood that the theatre engenders. The Drama of AIDS is also about immortality; how memory lives in the theatre and can be gracefully passed from one generation to another. About life in the theatre-and life, period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780325021591
Publisher:	Heinemann
Publication date:	10/05/2009
Pages:	113
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Kearns has been a fixture in the world of art and politics for more than three decades, combining a mainstream career in film and television with a prolific theatrical resume that includes writing, acting, directing, and producing. His intimate connection to the two plays he chronicles in emotional detail in The Drama of AIDS began in the mid-eighties. Wearing various artistic hats, Michael contributed to the premieres of Robert Chesley's Jerker and James Carroll Pickett's Dream Man. And more than twenty years later, he remains closely involved with them. Solo performance has also been a defining feature of his career, and he has been involved with dozens of one-person shows, including many that he wrote and performed such as intimacies, Rock, Attachments, and Make Love Not War. He is also the author of several books with Heinemann, including T-Cells & Sympathy, Acting = Life (both nominated for Lambda Awards), Getting Your Solo Act Together, Life Expectancies, and The Solo Performer's Journey.