Sarah Schulman Artery is delighted to devote a special section of its Activism issue to new work by Sarah Schulman, a remarkable writer and activist who somehow manages to frequently couple these activities. As Michael Bronski observes in his introduction to Schulman and these works, Sarah "shows us how to see and act." We are all richer for it. Sarah Schulman: Witness by Michael Bronski "It was the beginning of the end of the world but not everyone noticed right away. Some people were dying. Some people were busy. Some people were cleaning their houses while the war movie played on television." These are the opening sentences of Sarah Schulman's 1990 novel "People In Trouble," one of the first mainstream novels to deal with the AIDS epidemic. It is also the first novel to document AIDS activism--particularly the birth of ACT UP--and the queer community's response to the syndrome. Schulman characterizes her novel as a work of "witnessing." She's also described listing hundreds of everyday manifestations of AIDS-drugs like AL721, beepers going off in restaurants to remind PWAS to take their medications, the shape and color of KS lesions, posters at ACT UP rallies--in order to document what it was like to live at "the beginning of the end of the world." It is these acts of witnessing--of observing simply what happens and how people respond--that have helped make Schulman's work resonant and truthful. Indeed, Schulman has helped invent our cultural discussion around the epidemic and its myriad ramifications. We turn to the arts and philosophy to find new ways of conceptualizing everyday life; to find explanations and solace, politics and activism. Schulman shows us how to see and act. Aside from "People in Trouble," Schulman--who was active for many years in ACT UP, bringing to that group her experience with feminist health organizing--has written and lectured about AIDS organizing and art. Last year she published "Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America," an analysis of how mainstream culture appropriates, commercializes, and distorts both queer- and AIDS culture. Its inception was the realization that the plot of Jonathan Larson's hit musical "Rent" was stolen, in part, from "People in Trouble." Over the past two years, Schulman, as playwright, and Craig Lucas, as director, have produced a series of staged readings of Schulman's new play "The Child." Structurally complex and politically and socially challenging, "The Child" tells the story of a 15 year old, gay boy trapped in a toxic family dynamic and an escalating world of violence following his parents' discovery of his sexuality and his involvement in an affair with two older men. His story is interwoven with those of the older men's two lawyers: one a gay man with AIDS now on protease inhibitors and re-entering the professional-realm of the living, and the other a lesbian who is dealing with a potential breast-cancer diagnosis and a fickle lover of many years. With its themes of intergenerational sex, abandonment, death, children's sexuality, and the destructiveness of the biological family to gay people, "The Child" is a startling and provocative collaboration between Lucas and Schulman. Schulman has also contributed an essay to the Estate Project-sponsored "Loss Within Loss," to be published next spring by University of Wisconsin Press. It is a a thoughtful and incisive piece, taking as its point of departure Schulman's recollections and observations about her friend Stan Leventhal. It is also a fascinating rumination on the queer, downtown literary scene in New York during the eighties and nineties. As with all her writing, Schulman, through her observing and witnessing, makes us not only think, but pay attention. (adapted from Bronski's introduction to Artery's 1999 centerpiece, "Plays, Lies and Ticket Sales," a conversation between Bronski, Lucas and Schulman) Sarah Schulman's premiere publications: Play:  "The Child" Essay:  Through the Looking Glass Symposium:  "Does anybody really care..."