War During Peacetime: Mainstream Theater, Mass Media, and the 1985 Premiere of The Normal Heart [Note 1. An earlier version of this essay appeared in James ...]

Many twentieth‐century theater scholars declared contemporary mainstream theater drained of any political efficacy. To them, the financing of mainstream productions necessitated giving no offense to elite investors who tend to hold the dominant ideology. These scholars advocated relinquishing mainstream spaces to capitalists and creating a radical theater outside the spotlight. This essay argues, however, that only in mainstream venues can progressive ideologies be assimilated and disseminated. Examining the 1985 production of The Normal Heart proves this thesis and demonstrates the political vitality of U.S. mainstream theater. The big‐budget and much‐marketed production used its position of high visibility—particularly in newspapers—to support organizations fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in ways radical performances in marginal venues could not. This article is a gesture toward a larger theory about the political potential mainstream theater wields in its interpolation by the mass media. Mainstream theater can act as a negotiating force between emergent and dominant ideologies.