THE 399 THEATER OF THE AIDS EPIDEMIC

HIV/AIDS is a crisis of our lifetime, and artists were among the first to document its role in history.  In this course we will analyze theater created in response to the AIDS epidemic from the first documentation of the disease in 1981 to the present.  We will consider these works from interdisciplinary perspectives, drawing on politics, economics, and changing medical discourse and practice in order to understand how the embodiment of HIV on stage reflects changing medical and social conditions.  After exploring how public knowledge about AIDS has been constructed, we consider the creation and impact of artistic interventions.  Through comparison with popular press coverage of key moments in the history of HIV/AIDS in the United States, we examine plays and performance as historical evidence contributing to a cultural chronicle of the epidemic.  In conversation with New London’s AIDS Service Organization, Alliance for Living, students examine the connections among the local, national, and global histories of the epidemic and make them personal through their own performances, interviews, and awareness-building events.