Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS (Unnatural Acts: Theorizing the Performative) Review
This book is a valuable source for the variety of performances that have accompanied the appearance of AIDS in the United States. Roman carefully evaluates how theatre and performative events, from the activism of ACT-UP to Magic Johnson's announcement of his HIV status, have shaped the way that AIDS has been portrayed. In his introduction, Roman outlines his positionality within his subject, remaining critically responsible while acknowledging the impossibility of "objectivity." An important aspect of his critical approach is his "generosity" towards the performances he analyzes. He states that his purpose in the book is not to evaluate the performances for their artistic merit, but to show their position within the overall field of AIDS performance. He shows how performances that may have been "bad" nonetheless had an impact on their audience. Roman never succumbs to romanticism or nostalgia, but approaches his subject with reverence and respect. Roman's book leaves room for others to continue within the subject of AIDS performance and will continue to be a valuable source for those working in the field.
Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS (Unnatural Acts: Theorizing the Performative) Overview
Acts of Intervention examines the ways that gay men have used theatre and performance to intervene in the AIDS crisis. It discusses dramatic texts and public performances -- from cabarets and candlelight vigils to full-scale Broadway productions such as Angels in America and Rent -- that have shaped, and been shaped by, the history of AIDS in national, regional, and local contexts. Román examines mainstream as well as alternative and activist forms of theatre, including solo performance, community-based projects, mixed-media events, activist demonstrations, and AIDS educational theatre initiatives.
Acts of Intervention traces the ways in which performance and theater have participated in and informed the larger cultural politics of race, sexuality, citizenship, and AIDS in the United States during the last fifteen years. The book discusses not only how the theater has provided a forum for gay male response to the epidemic but also the degree to which those responses have in turn shaped the ideological formulation of AIDS. Román offers a new method for mapping the relation between AIDS and representation by combining interpretive strategies from performance theory, gay and lesbian studies, critical race discourse, and cultural studies.
This book is dedicated to writing the history of theatrical interventions in the AIDS epidemic, including performances whose official history has been largely neglected or forgotten. Because many early performances about AIDS left little or no documentation, the task of constructing an AIDS theatre historiography confronts immediate problems and limitations.
Acts of Intervention argues that the history of AIDS performance is located at the juncture of memory and disappearance, of mourning and survival, of representation and its impossibility in the context of epidemic loss.
Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS (Unnatural Acts: Theorizing the Performative) Specifications
AIDS has had myriad effects on gay culture, and its influence on gay writing and theater have perhaps been the most notable. While novels and poetry by gay men and lesbians have recorded the epidemic, performance art has most closely reflected and embraced AIDS activism. David Roman's Acts of Intervention chronicles the emergence of AIDS as a subject in performance and theater, from the post-modern, high-camp, drag extravaganzas of Lypsinka to the overtly political parody of the Afro Pomo Homos to Tim Miller's playful, nude monologue performances: art as politics. But Roman is as interested in politics as art, and much of Acts of Intervention impressively discusses how public activity protests against government AIDS policy are "performances" themselves. Roman's knowledge of AIDS, art, and gay culture is exhaustive, and his writing is clear, succinct, and informed. Gay culture and art has always been about becoming visible and powerful, and Acts of Intervention charts how this has occurred over the past 17 years.
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