Southern lesbian playwright Rebecca Ranson was born in 1943, positioning the most active part of her career in the 1980s, when the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Ranson studied Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Georgia and received her Masters of Fine Arts in Playwriting from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She held various jobs related to writing and media throughout her life, and she wrote more than 30 plays, many of which were regularly performed in Atlanta at 7 Stages in Little Five Points.[1] Ranson was embedded in the Atlanta theater community, mentioning local area actor and former Emory professor Jim Grimsley in her journals. She was also an LGBTQ+ activist, working for 12 years as the Executive Director of the Southeastern Arts, Media and Education Project (SAME), an LGBTQ+ arts and activism nonprofit. Although she was married twice to men, she wrote extensively in her journals about her relationship with poet Miranda Cambanis.[2]
The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript and Rare Book Library at Emory University acquired Ranson’s papers as a gift and houses her journals from 1954-2007.[3] Ranson’s journals from 1980-1984 are deeply personal, containing diary entries, to-do lists, play drafts, poems, and drawings. Following the passing of her close friend Warren Johnston on April 13, 1984, Ranson wrote a play entitled “Warren” about AIDS and Johnston’s death. The journal Ranson kept from January 2 to June 2, 1984 is an intimate look into her grieving process and the process of writing “Warren.”
1981 marked the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Over the course of the 1980s, the Atlanta community transformed, struck by death and fear. A 1987 article in Atlanta Magazine painted a picture of a city “frightened to death of AIDS.”[4] As a major southern U.S. city, Atlanta has long been known as a gay mecca in the South, but the nation’s eyes were on New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles as the AIDS crisis developed. A timeline of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on HIV.gov notes the 1985 off-Broadway premiere of Larry Kramer’s play “The Normal Heart” — “the play covers the impact of the growing AIDS epidemic on the New York gay community between 1981-1984” — and the 1985 Broadway premiere of William M. Hoffman’s play “As Is,” “the first play about HIV/AIDS to make it to Broadway.”[5] In Atlanta a year earlier in 1984, Ranson was penning the preliminary drafts of “Warren,” deep in thought about the personal and social impact of the AIDS crisis. Ranson’s journals and play “Warren” depict the devastation of the disease on Southern communities. Ranson’s obituary in the Georgia Voice describes “Warren” as “one of the first plays dealing with AIDS to be produced and it stood apart due to its highly personalized and loving tone and because it was written not only by a woman, but a woman from the South.”[6]
That “highly personalized and loving tone” can be read throughout Ranson’s 1984 journal as she tenderly describes her last moments with Johnston and writes meditative journal entries on his decline. A haunting entry from February 3, 1984 reads: “I am having no problem being with Warren. The problem I am going to have is being without him. / How to keep Warren alive?” Writing the play “Warren” was an act of queer friendship and love, and performing it at 7 Stages was a significant moment in queer Southern history. The journals include Ranson’s draft of a letter she wrote to many of Johnston’s friends to update them on his condition. She writes in the draft of the letter, “I don’t want to take time to write each one of you because I want to write a play or film for Warren and that is my priority.” Indeed, in the program for the play’s premiere at 7 Stages, Ranson writes,
- “When Warren got his AIDS diagnosis, he began to worry incredibly about a legacy, so I thought I would write a play about him that he could see while he was alive, and he would know what a wonderful legacy he was leaving. He didn’t live long enough to see it. The play became a microcosm of the large circle of people that Warren touched with his art and his love. It also became a vehicle for raising consciousness of folks in general and a symbol for the many lives lost to AIDS.”[7]
Ranson’s playbill statement and concurrent journal entries once again demonstrate the correlation between the personal trauma of the AIDS crisis and the art Ranson created about it. Ranson’s journals are important artifacts of queer history, documenting the HIV/AIDS epidemic, its impact on the queer community, and the context behind the creation of queer Southern art like “Warren.”
Free-form poetic journal entries offer invaluable insight into Ranson’s writing process, how it was intertwined with her grieving process, and how queer art from this time period was an important reflection of the collective trauma the queer community suffered during the AIDS crisis. As Johnston’s condition worsens, Ranson begins to write diagonally across the pages of her 1984 journal. Across all six of the journals Ranson used from 1980-1984, this is the first instance of diagonal writing. Her frantic script seems to signal desperation, and a watery ink stain on the page suggests a tear had fallen on the page. Detached from other paragraphs, floating in diagonal space, Ranson scrawls “All these dying people” without punctuation. She continues, still diagonally with many line breaks: “Warren gave me 2 pictures of him — taken by William in the Atlanta airport. ‘Didn’t know that many people cared about me’ / Speech about being invisible to others / What if I don’t die? / I’d just feel so guilty about all the money people spent. / They rub my legs — everyone does”. This page is a haunting record of what may have been Johnston’s words, recorded by Ranson in her journal as basis for the play, or Ranson’s own interpretation of Johnston’s feelings surrounding his illness as she observes his suffering.
“Warren” was not the last play Ranson wrote related to how the AIDS epidemic impacted the queer community. Her play “Higher Ground: Voices of AIDS,” based on oral history interviews she conducted in the ‘80s with members of the group People with Aids, was performed in Atlanta in 1988.[8] Ranson continued to keep journals, documenting important queer history through her elegantly-recorded emotions and life’s work.
[1] “Printed material, 1919, 1925, 1970-2010,” Emory Libraries, accessed October 30, 2023,https://archives.libraries.emory.edu/repositories/7/archival_objects/334320.
[2] “Rebecca Ranson Papers,” Emory Libraries, accessed October 30, 2023, https://archives.libraries.emory.edu/repositories/7/resources/3281.
[3] “Rebecca Ranson Papers.”
[4] Vincent Coppola, “The Party’s Over,” Atlanta Magazine, October 1, 1987, https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/hiv-aids-the-partys-over/.
[5] “A Timeline of HIV and AIDS,” HIV.gov, accessed October 30, 2023, https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline/.
[6] The Family of Rebecca Ranson, “Rebecca Hargett Ranson, 1943-2017,” Georgia Voice, October 25, 2017, https://thegavoice.com/news/georgia/rebecca-hargett-ranson-1943-2017/.
[7] 7 Stages Theatre, “Warren, by Rebecca Ranson, program for the first run of the play at 7 Stages Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, opened August 23, 1984 (8 pages),” accessed October 30, 2023, http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lgbtq/id/1116.
[8] Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Actors in Rebecca Ranson’s ‘Higher Ground: Voices of AIDS,’ Horizon Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, June 19, 1988,” accessed October 30, 2023, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/4142/.
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basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline/.
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Horizon Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, June 19, 1988,” accessed October 30, 2023, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/4142/.
Coppola, Vincent. “The Party’s Over.” Atlanta Magazine, October 1, 1987.
“Printed material, 1919, 1925, 1970-2010.” Emory Libraries. Accessed October 30, 2023.
Ranson, Rebecca. Journal: January 2, 1984 – June 2, 1984. Box 23, Folder 6. MSS 1253.
Rebecca Ranson Papers. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. 12 October 2023.
“Rebecca Ranson Papers,” Emory Libraries. Accessed October 30, 2023.
The Family of Rebecca Ranson. “Rebecca Hargett Ranson, 1943-2017.” Georgia Voice, October
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7 Stages Theatre. “Warren, by Rebecca Ranson, program for the first run of the play at 7 Stages
Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, opened August 23, 1984 (8 pages).” Accessed October 30, 2023. http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lgbtq/id/1116.