The Normal Heart, set during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, is the impassioned indictment of a society that allowed the plague to happen, a moving denunciation of the ignorance and fear that helped kill an entire generation. It has been produced and taught all over the world. Its companion play, The Destiny of Me, is the stirring story of an AIDS activist forced to put his life in the hands of the very doctor he has been denouncing.

Larry Kramer (1935-2020) was a writer and activist. In 1981, with five friends, he founded Gay Men's Health Crisis, and in 1987 he founded ACT UP. He is the author of The Normal Heart, which in 2014 was made into an Emmy-winning TV adaptation by HBO. His other plays include The Destiny of Me, Sissies' Scrapbook, and Just Say No, and his prose work includes The American People Volumes 1 & 2, the novel Faggots, two nonfiction books, and a screenplay, Women in Love. He was a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a Master American Dramatist, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award, presented by the Tony Awards Committee.