WAR DURING PEACETIME:MAINSTREAM THEATER, MASS MEDIA, AND THE 1985 PREMIERE OF THE NORMAL HEART 1 by Jacob Juntunen Many twentieth-century theater scholars declared contemporary main- stream theater drained of any political efficacy. To them, the financing of mainstream productions necessitated giving no offense to elite inves- tors who tend to hold the dominant ideology. These scholars advocated relinquishing mainstream spaces to capitalists and creating a radical the- ater outside the spotlight. This essay argues, however, that only in main- stream venues can progressive ideologies be assimilated and disseminated. Examining the 1985 production of The Normal Heart proves this the- sis and demonstrates the political vitality of U.S. mainstream theater. The big-budget and much-marketed production used its position of high visi- bility—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 politi- cal potential mainstream theater wields in its interpolation by the mass media. Mainstream theater can act as a negotiating force between emer- gent and dominant ideologies. In 2014, when HBO released a film version of Larry Kramer’s 1985 play The Normal Heart, its advertising tagline was, “To win a war, you have to start one.” 2 This rhetoric conflating gay men’s fight against AIDS in the 1980s with war was not new. In fact, journalist Randy Shilts used it in the quintessential history of the subject And the Band Played On. 3 And while HBO promoted its film as history in 2014, 4 in 1985 when the play opened at the Public Theater in New York City, reviewers were extremely skeptical of Larry Kramer’s dire warnings about the health risks posed by HIV/AIDS. While discussing the “nearly 5,000” total dead from AIDS, 5 reviewers of the play’s pre- miere could not fathom that by 2014 nearly 6,000 people each day PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 40, No. 1, January 2015 © 2015 Peace History Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 63