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The List Keepers
The AIDS crisis shattered Broadway, and the scope of the loss has never been fully accounted for. Some kept their own records.
An introductory page acknowledges the list’s many sources, from publications ( The Advocate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek) to theater professionals to the Actors’ Fund of America — and, most tellingly, it cites the “particular effort … made by the casts and staffs” of several long-running Broadway shows, including Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. When he didn’t have details, he simply wrote down whatever he knew: “Son of Joseph Papp, ’91.” Some entries were apparently just reminders to himself: “Mark.” “Jacques.” When Neufeld (who died of Parkinson’s disease in 2015) retired around 2006, he passed along the list, which had reached an estimated 1,700 names, to Tom Viola, BC/EFA’s then–executive director. It is, Viola says as he looks over the pages in a conference room of the organization’s midtown offices, an imperfect record: “It was an emotional response, as opposed to a historical response.” What makes the list so poignant and powerful is that it is, ironically, living history, but only as long as there are people for whom it’s more than just a set of professions and ages and dates.
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