Outside the LGBT Community Center, it was August 18, 2025, but as soon as I stepped into Room 101, I went back in time.
People were wearing black t-shirts with the words SILENCE = DEATH blazing on them below a giant pink triangle, as well as white tees with a giant red handprint on it. Here and there, I overheard snippets of people talking about the recent death of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, while others laughed about conservatives’ throwing a hissy-fit over Madonna’s latest music video “Like A Prayer.” A woman with a sparkly wig glided around on rollerskates. In the back, photocopies of news articles about the AIDS epidemic covered two tables. Then one of the moderators up front lead everyone in a familiar chant, shouted three times:
ACT UP!
FIGHT BACK!
FIGHT AIDS!
Fight Back! is an immersive theatrical experience created by David Wise, whose aim is to recreate a specific meeting by ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) on March 13, 1989. In registering to attend this “show,” audience members are asked to play the role of a specific individual who actually attended the meeting– held in the exact room I sat in– 36 years ago. Wise thus is not only the producer of this novel piece, but a casting director where everyone who attends has to perform and participate. The result is an exceptionally engaging experience.
The night I attended, I was “Cary Stegall,” a gay man from Texas (a fellow audience member I met during Fight Back! told me that he knew Cary, who lives upstate). According to the homework Wise sent to me a week before, I had two proposals to bring to the floor as Stegall during the meeting agenda. One, as a member of the Coordinating Committee, was to ask for more funds to attend the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Health Conference; the other, as part of the Montreal Ad-Hoc Committee, was to see if ACT UP would hold a fundraiser at the Tunnel (a gay bar at the time which closed in 2001). In both cases, I needed to “stay in character” and field questions from the other ACT UPers in attendance. Everyone is involved to varying degrees during Fight Back!: thinking on our feet, advocating for our motions while criticizing others, asking questions, and re-enacting LGBTQ history.
I don’t know what the actual outcomes were to my/Stegall’s or the other proposals brought to the floor that night, but that seems beside the point. Wise wants us to understand how activism happened during the AIDS epidemic, to experience the messy work of joining others in a coalition that has a common cause. Fight Back! is a powerful means of bringing this history to life, but also a blueprint to inspire community organizing right now.
Initially inspired by Sarah Schulman´s excellent and authoritative book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York: 1987-1993, as well as the ACT UP Oral History Project she created with Jim Hubbard, Wise invested an incredible amount of research to create an accurate environment for us all to inhabit and improvise. “I looked at all of the minutes of each of the meetings,” Wise said. “March 13, 1989 was one of the most detailed, and so that was the reason I chose that particular one.”
The evening lasted around two and a half hours (as cell phones didn´t exist back then, my prediction isn’t entirely accurate), with some moments more intense than others. Most of the meeting agenda centered on the upcoming Target City Hall action (on March 28, 1989), voting on posters and slogans about (then) Mayor Ed Koch´s atrocious handling of the AIDS crisis. We practiced some chants for the upcoming action, led by “Ron Goldberg”: “Act up! Stand tall! Time to march on City Hall!” When “Victor Mendolia” suggested posters be put up in the subway, ACT UP members discussed which neighborhoods should be prioritized, as well as translating their messaging into Spanish and English. “Lee Schy” stood up and informed us that Griffin Gold had died of AIDS. In Fight Back!, the ACT UP meeting was procedural, practical, grief-laden, and snarky, oftentimes all at once.
A particularly powerful moment occurred when “Gregg Bordowitz” and “Mike Frisch” reviewed civil disobedience training with us, including ACT UP´s “wave” structure (i.e. a method to prevent everyone participating at a public action to not get arrested all at once). “You need to be willing to be arrested,” they repeated frequently. “But if you do not wish to do that, there are many other ways you can be involved.” We were taught how to lock our arms together and sit down, to be “dead weight” if the cops tried bringing us up onto our feet. A number of us asked what we should do once we got downtown to be processed (“Carry some form of identification and some money,” they urged. “Don´t carry any weapons”).
By paying such close attention to detail, while allowing each audience member to interpret their role, Fight Back! became more than a performance. Just like ACT UP´s highly theatrical demonstrations in the ´80s and early ´90s, this experience felt like a boot camp for activists seeking basic tools to get engaged and “act up” now, in 2025. By immersing ourselves into this chapter from the past, audiences were able to not only remember, but also understand, and make connections to the troubles prevailing in our own time.
Leave a Reply