'Fight Back' Turns Audience Members into Participants in an Act Up Meeting

This episode of All of It explores 'Fight Back,' an immersive theatrical experience created by David Wise that recreates a 1989 ACT UP meeting at the LGBT Community Center in New York City. Participants are assigned personas based on real ACT UP members and must inhabit those roles throughout the event, transforming the audience into active participants in a historically significant moment of AIDS activism. The production emphasizes the power of grassroots organizing, the emotional weight of collective action, and the often-overlooked minutiae of activist meetings—planning, facilitation, and internal debate—as the true foundation of empowerment. David Wise draws from Sarah Schulman’s oral history-based book, Let the Record Show, to authentically reconstruct the meeting’s dynamics, while also confronting the challenges of representing those who didn’t survive the epidemic. The episode features calls from former ACT UP members, activists, and participants who reflect on the emotional resonance of reliving that era, underscoring how theater can serve as both memory and mobilization. The experience is not about performance but about embodied presence, collective decision-making, and the enduring relevance of direct action in times of crisis.