For Terrence McNally, MOTHERS AND SONS Asks the Question He Chose Not To

When Terrence McNally lost a partner to the AIDS epidemic, he was full of questions about the person and circumstances which brought about his death - but he didn't ask them. In his new play MOTHERS AND SONS, which McNally discussed with the Huffington Post, one character asks the questions he didn't.

McNally said the question of who had infected his partner didn't need to be answered because it wouldn't bring him back.

"It was a question that was too painful to ask on both sides - Gary's and mine," McNally said.

So when Katharine Gerard, a character of MOTHERS AND SONS who lost her son to AIDS, asks the question of her son's still living partner, she's doing more than asking the question McNally chose not to - she's educating a new generation of theatregoers about the mentality of those who survived the AIDS epidemic.

"Do younger generations even understand how such wounds still fester? Given the number of 'thank you's' I receive after each performance, I think not," McNally told the Huffington Post.

"I am being thanked for giving them back their history - a history so recent that I can still taste its ashes. Mothers and Sons wants this next generation to taste them, too."

Katherine, played by Tyne Daly, says during the play that she would track down the man who infected her son and kill him.

"I wish I could answer Katharine's question but really, of what use would a name, an answer be?" McNally said, noting that information does not necessarily bring about peace.

"I wonder if by the end of the play his mother can accept that her rejection of him because of his sexuality killed him as surely as the virus that took his life," he said.

To read McNally's full account, head over to the Huffington Post.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski