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Tom Viola, the longtime executive director of the groundbreaking nonprofit organization Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, announced today that he’ll retire at the end of 2024, ending a 36-year tenure that guided the organization – and the theater industry – through two catastrophic eras: the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s and the Covid pandemic of the 21st Century.

Under his leadership, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS emerged as one of the leading fundraising and grant-making organizations in the country.

Danny Whitman, the current Broadway Cares Director of Development who’s been with the nonprofit for 15 years, will succeed Viola as executive director beginning January 1, 2025. Viola will remain involved with the organization as a consultant throughout 2025, advising on Broadway Cares’ National Grants Program strategies and procedures.

Viola announced his retirement to the organization’s Board of Trustees at its regular July meeting after discussions with the organization’s Executive Committee. The...

Three years ago, the playwright and activist Larry Kramer stood outside the Golden Theatre during the Broadway run of his 1985 AIDS play The Normal Heart, which Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy has made into an HBO movie premiering on May 25. As teary theatergoers exited, he handed them a one-page “Letter from Larry Kramer,” which began: Please know that everything in The Normal Heart happened. These were and are real people who lived and spoke and died, and are presented here as best I could. Several more have died since, including Bruce, whose name was Paul Popham, and Tommy, whose name was Rodger McFarlane and who became my best friend, and Emma, whose name was Dr. Linda Laubenstein.The character named Felix Turner — a closeted, dying New York Times fashion reporter who’s the lover of Kramer’s onstage alter ego, Ned Weeks — was missing from the letter. “If Larry wanted...

Chicago – “Thank you for coming out today,” said Idaho senator Larry Craig at an August ’07 press conference. He had been arrested two months prior on the charges of “lewd conduct” in a men’s restroom. This was the latest of many similar allegations aimed at the politician, who had spent his career hiding in the closet, while refusing to help pass legislation that would protect gay rights.

According to Kirby Dick’s galvanizing documentary, “Outrage,” Craig is merely one of many closeted politicians on Capitol Hill whose repressed lifestyle has led them to vote hypocritically. The film argues that if these key figures in America’s political establishment outed themselves, then their voting records would change dramatically. Most of the politicians Dick outs are white, male conservatives who seem to be punishing themselves because of their own impulses. As a result, they are also punishing every single gay American.

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