‘The Normal Heart’ Scrapbooks Available Online
In 1989, a play about AIDS and homosexuality drew a firestorm of reaction in the Ozarks. The Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State University) Theatre and Dance Department planned to perform Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart. Students wanted to bring an awareness of AIDS to campus and chose Kramer’s play, which dramatized the growing AIDS problem in the gay and lesbian community in the early 1980s.
The performances were planned for the third week of November in Craig Hall’s Coger Theatre. By September, though, local conservatives had heard of the production and protested its use at a public institution. It would be the first controversial performance of Kramer’s play in over 600 nation-wide productions. For most of that semester, the university was embroiled in controversy over the production, which also became a much larger fight regarding academic freedom, community values, and what the public considered appropriate for a public institution.
Two scrapbooks of mainly newspaper clippings about the performance, community reactions, and related events (such as an arson investigation) collected by an anonymous donor are now available online through the Digital Collections of MSU Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives:
These scrapbooks are part of the Ozarks Lesbian and Gay Archives. More material is available in the University Archives. To learn more about the event, contact Special Collections and Archives.