SOURCE: "Coming Up for Air: Three AIDS Plays," in Journal of American Culture, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer, 1992, pp. 63-7.

In the following essay, Gross analyzes three plays that emphasize the political implications of AIDS.

Jews, homosexuals, infidels and other devils took more than their fair share of the blame for the Black Death which plagued medieval Europe. No historical drama exists to depict that piece of the gay collective past. Until recently, writers of gay historical drama chose a plague of a different color—the non-biological warfare of persecution, oppression and brutality which crouches at the center of the "three key symbolic events in … gay history: Oscar Wilde's trial, the Nazi purge, and Stonewall" [J. M. Clom, "'A Culture That Just Isn't Sexual': Dramatizing Gay Male History," Theatre Journal 41, 1989]. As Is, The Normal Heart, and Safe Sex each allude to the latter two events (indeed, the Holocaust acts as...