![]() ![]() In 1987 Kramer founded the more abrasive direct action group, Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (“Act Up”), whose confrontational advocacy helped to keep the Aids crisis on the front pages and, arguably, spurred government and medical authorities to speed up HIV/Aids drugs research. But his willingness to put people’s backs up led to his being forced out of the group for refusing to adopt a moderate tone with New York city officials, whom he repeatedly accused of ignoring or trying to cover up the epidemic. In 2000 it was named one of the 100 greatest plays of the 20th century by the National Theatre.Ī short, neatly dressed man with close-cropped hair, Kramer became a prominent LGBT and Aids activist, co-founding the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the world’s largest Aids service organisation, in 1982. ![]() The play caused a sensation when it opened at Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York in April 1985, and in 1986 when it was staged at the Royal Court in London in a production starring Martin Sheen as Kramer’s alter ego Ned Weeks. ![]() Larry Kramer, who has died aged 84, was an American dramatist whose play The Normal Heart, an autobiographical tale of an angry young man fighting to warn the authorities and gay community in New York City of the looming Aids epidemic, represented the first serious artistic attempt to face up to the crisis. ![]()
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