On the evening of June 3, LGBTQ+ Chicagoans and their friends gathered at Goodman Theater, 170 N. Dearborn St. to join with Season of Concern Chicago to pay tribute to the Biscotto-Miller Fund.
The Fund, now celebrating its fortieth anniversary, was the first organized AIDS response by the theater community for the theater community, proceeding Season of Concern or Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Established in 1985, the Fund began as an act of passion, spontaneity, purpose, and urgency.
The evening began with a cocktail hour that gave guests the chance to mingle, reminisce, and participate in a silent auction and raffle.
Theater writer (and Windy City Times contributor) Jonathan Abarbanel served as host for the evenings program while vocalists Mark David Kaplan, Marta Bady, E. Faye Butler and Keely Vasquez performed throughout the evening.
At the start of the evening Bridget McDonough presented the Larry Sloan Award to outgoing Executive Director Michael Ryczek. Abarbanel was then joined onstage by Biscotto-Miller Fund board member Marcie McVay who spoke on the genesis of the fund.
At the start of the AIDS crisis, actors and artists Tommy Biscotto and J. Thomas Patrick were stricken with the illness. Biscotto died in October of 1984, followed by Miller on April 7, 1985.
Within five days of Miller’s memorial, a group of volunteers began organizing a benefit variety show to fuel the Biscotto-Miller Fund. The event, Arts Against AIDS, brought together many of Chicago’s top theater artists and emerging talents for a marathon evening of comedy, drama, music, and dance.
Arts Against AIDS was different and successful, not only for a $10 ticket price but also as a celebration of the grassroots synergy of Chicago’s Off-Loop theater movement and as a community effort to raise money for direct assistance to people with AIDS and to arm the Chicago theater community for the struggles to come.
Aberbanel and McVay acknowledged Arts Against AIDS’s surviving organizing and advisory committee members in the room, including Bonnie Freeman, Melinda Skilondz, Tom Guerra, Richard Henzel, Jim Rinnert, Jane Sahlins, Johnny Bash and David Aaron.
The two also acknowledged many talents who have passed away, including Lynn Carroll, Larry Kramer, Galye Kirshenbaum, Essie and Irv Kupcinet, Laurence, McCauley Frank Galati, Ann Barzel, Laurence McCauley, Larry Coven, William J. Norris, Scott McPherson, Lily Monkus, Joyce Sloan and Gary Tucker, who launched the theater careers of J. Patrick Miller and Tommy Boscotto.
Aberbanel then introduced Biscotto’s partner Jim Rinnert, who reflected on his relationships with Miller and Biscotto.
He said, “Tommy was one of the earlier diagnoses with AIDS—though it wasn’t called AIDS yet. It was still a mystery disease and over the following months a lot of potential cures were tried out on him, and each failed. Through that time, Tommy was a spokesman for those who had this illness, especially when it was designated a gay disease, advocating for care and research.”
Rinnert went on to reacall that, “At J. Patrick’s memorial at Victory Gardens Theater, Mary Azano stood up and said, ‘We have to do something. We take care of our own.’ The money raised that day at the Arts Against AIDS event kept the Biscotto-Miller Fund going. When Season of Concern was formed in 1987, Midwest Equity head Tad Curry met with the Biscotto-Miller Board of Directors and told us the new organization would keep the Fund funded through benefits and after-play solicitations.”
Rinnert closed by saying, “One of my proudest moments, years later, when a diagnosis of AIDS was no longer a certain death sentence, was when Season of Concern expanded the Fund’s mission—Michael Ryczek was Board President then—the Fund went beyond support for Chicago theater practitioners affected by HIV/AIDS and to encompass broader health and emergency needs within the community. I’m so glad this fund exists…and especially glad that it carries on the names of these two men I loved very much—Tommy Biscotto and J. Pat Miller. They would be proud too…”
Sponsors of the event included Goodman Theater, Roscoe’s Tavern, Actor’s Equity Association, Broadway in Chicago, The Entertainment Fund, Roche Schulfer, Mary Beth Fisher, Jim Rinnert and Brent Fischer.
Season of Concern event. Photos by Vern Hester
