Elton John has led tributes to Larry Kramer, the playwright who raised theatregoers’ consciousness about Aids, who has died aged 84.
Bill Goldstein, a writer who was working on a biography of Kramer, confirmed the news to The Associated Press. Kramer’s husband, David Webster, told The New York Times that Kramer died of pneumonia.
Elton John said: “We have lost a giant of a man who stood up for gay rights like a warrior. His anger was needed at a time when gay men’s deaths to Aids were being ignored by the American government.” Kramer, who wrote The Normal Heart and founded the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, also known as Act Up, lost his lover to acquired immune deficiency syndrome in 1984 and was himself infected with the virus.