FIGHT BACK is a theatrical experiment. It’s March 13, 1989, and you are attending a meeting of ACT UP New York, the passionate group taking direct confrontational action to fight the AIDS crisis. But here's the thing: there are no actors. It's not a performance that you sit and watch. You and everyone there are active participants in the meeting. Participants get a biographical profile of their persona and instructions for how to engage. Some (self-selected) people will also get details about specialized roles they’ll have at the meeting. Every persona will be an actual person who was at that meeting. A $19.89 donation is suggested for all participants.* All net proceeds will be donated to The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center where FIGHT BACK takes place, in the actual room where the 1989 meeting happened. FIGHT BACK Created by David Wise Produced by Benson Drive Productions (George Strus, CEO) FIGHT BACK Ambassadors include Amber Ruffin, Joel Kim Booster, Margaret Cho, Michael Urie, Peppermint, Rosie O’Donnell, Roxane Gay, Ryan O’Connell, and Wilson Cruz. @fightbacknyc on Instagram. For further details, please visit https://www.fightback.nyc/ *If this suggested donation is a financial barrier to entry, there are opportunities to volunteer for an hour before the event and then be a full participant at no cost. Please email fightbacknyc@gmail.com for further details.
Audience Role
When you come to Fight Back, from the minute you arrive you are a person attending the ACT UP meeting at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Manhattan on March 13, 1989. You'll read more information about ACT UP on the Background Information page. Your persona will be an actual person who was at that meeting. When you register for Fight Back, you will fill out a brief questionnaire so that you get matched with a persona that suits you.
Ages: 18 +
Themes about being a queer person in 1989
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About Fight Back
The goal of Fight Back is to try to experience the amazing, complicated, life-changing emotions that the people at an ACT UP meeting in 1989 felt. For many ACT UPers, the weekly Monday night general meetings were central to their experience in ACT UP. Through these meetings, ACT UPers came to understand that their lives had worth — contrary to what they were being told by their families, their communities, and their government. During an unfathomably horrible time, they brought their anger, their shame, their defiance, their fear, their humor, their stubbornness, and their sexiness, and discovered that together they could use all of this to truly change the world and save their lives. We can read about the meetings in many fascinating accounts, like Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show. We can listen to oral histories. We can watch some of the limited documentary footage that exists from ACT UP meetings. But Fight Back explores whether there is something additional we can experience by attempting to inhabit the people who were actually there. Through trying to feel what they felt — by having our bodies enact their actions — can we come closer to experiencing what they experienced? Fight Back uses some somewhat advanced theatrical techniques to accomplish this, but it makes those techniques accessible to everyone.