The safe word was “lasagna.”

On the floor, a group of people playing demonstrators, sitting cross-legged, arms linked, were chanting, “Act Up! Fight Back! Fight AIDS!” Around them standing, ready to separate them and haul them individually out of the circle by their shoulders, was another group of people playing cops.

If playtime went south and things got too rough, the word “lasagna” would ring out.

To make things more intriguing during the self-described “theatrical experiment” of Fight Back, all the real-life people in the ground floor Room 101 of New York’s LGBT Center in were inhabiting the selves of real-life people in 1989, attending a meeting of direct action group Act Up on March 13 that year in the same room at The Center.

There are no actors in Fight Back, just participant

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