Skip to content
1981
Volume 19, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 1750-3159
  • E-ISSN: 1750-3167

Abstract

What might it mean to think of as a musical belonging to HIV/AIDS histories? Though the musical’s performance life begins just before widespread attention to HIV/AIDS, the musical ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000, an eighteen-year stretch that encompasses the early days of HIV/AIDS awareness marked by myriad suffering and loss, US political aversions to addressing the crisis, art propelling activist campaigns and the eventual mitigation of the illness due to novel therapies. Throughout it all, was performed on Broadway. Historicizing through the HIV/AIDS crisis emphasizes how musical theatre can be understood as a genre perennially oriented towards cycles of loss and rebirth.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00206_1
2026-03-11
2026-04-15

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ault, Julie ed. (2006), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Germany: Steidl.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Anon. (2020), ‘Rebel Wilson steals the show with HILARIOUS unexpected BAFTA 2020 Speech – BBC’, YouTube, 2 February, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTXfcFe4Tbc&t=28s. Accessed 2 February 2026.
  3. Bay-Cheng, Sarah (2009), ‘“Away we go”: Poetry and play in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats’, in D. E. Chinitz (ed.), A Companion to T. S. Eliot, Chichester and Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 22838.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Begley, Sarah (2016), ‘Remembering Valerie Eliot, T.S. Eliot’s devoted widow’, Time, 17 August, https://time.com/4447078/valerie-eliot-90th-birthday/. Accessed 15 September 2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bettcher, Talia Mae (2014), ‘Trapped in the wrong theory: Rethinking trans oppression and resistance’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39:2, pp. 383406, https://doi.org/10.1086/673088.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), 478 U.S. 186, p. 6.
  7. Brooks, Peter (1984), Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative, New York: A. A. Knopf.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Buckley, Norman (@theaidsmemorial) (2020), ‘THE AIDS MEMORIAL on Instagram: “— Timothy Scott (September 15, 1955 – February 24, 1988)”’, Instagram, 15 September, https://www.instagram.com/p/B2bl5WcpBEP/. Accessed 2 February 2026.
  9. Desta, Yohana (2020), ‘Cats VFX editor confirms the “butthole cut” was very real, very terrible’, Vanity Fair, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/04/cats-butthole-cut-vfx-editor. Accessed 28 November 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Donovan, Ryan (2023), Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre, London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Edemariam, Aida (2012), ‘Valerie Eliot, keeper of the TS Eliot flame’, The Guardian, 16 November, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/16/ts-eliot-keeper-flame. Accessed 15 September 2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Foucault, Michel ([1978] 1990), The History of Sexuality, New York: Vintage Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Gere, David (2004), How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Juhasz, Alexandra and Kerr, Theodore (2022), We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Kristeva, Julia and Lechte, John (1982), ‘Approaching Abjection’, Oxford Literary Review, 5:1–2, pp. 12549.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Kushner, Tony ([1991] 2013), Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, revised ed., New York: Theatre Communications Group.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Langmuir, Molly (2019), ‘An oral history of Cats, as told by its original cats’, Vulture, 19 December, https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/cats-oral-history-as-told-by-its-cats.html. Accessed 1 August 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Muñoz, José Esteban (1996), ‘Ephemera as evidence: Introductory notes to queer acts’, Women & Performance, 8:2, pp. 516, https://doi.org/10.1080/07407709608571228.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Phelan, Peggy (1997), ‘Unrecovered rectums: Disinterring the rose theatre’, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 7394.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Robbins, Caryn (2016), ‘CATS Choreographer Gillian Lynne “very angry” over Blankenbuehler hiring’, BroadwayWorld.com, https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/CATS-Choreographer-Gillian-Lynne-Very-Angry-Over-Blankenbuehler-Hiring-20160608. Accessed 27 November 2020.
  21. Rogen, Seth (@Sethrogen) (2020), ‘Release the butthole cut of Cats!!’, X, 18 March, https://x.com/Sethrogen/status/1240138000249630721. Accessed 1 May 2024.
  22. Rosenberg, Bernard and Harburg, Ernest (1993), The Broadway Musical: Collaboration in Commerce and Art, New York: New York University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky ([1990] 2008), Epistemology of the Closet, Updated With a New Preface, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Shapiro, Eddie (2014), Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations With the Great Women of Musical Theater, New York: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Sternfeld, Jessica (2006), The Megamusical, Profiles in Popular Music, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (2015), The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Umland, Anne (1992), Felix Gonzalez-Torres, exhibition catalogue, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00206_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00206_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test