The fact that “The Normal Heart” was chronicling these horrific events more or less in real time made it so much more than a play. It was a coming together of the actors and the audience to to talk about it, cry about it, cry some more about it — to connect. Up until then, I had never been in a play where the audience’s weeping would become part of the mise-en-scène.

Every single night, there was a palpable sense of catharsis in the theater before, during and after the performance. The production was a release for a community in mourning, and also managed to infiltrate popular culture in a way that created much wider awareness about a largely misunderstood disease. (A few years later, Tony Kushner would dramatize the horrors of AIDS to an even wider audience with his epic “Angels in America.”)

I can’t think of any significant national trauma during my life to which dramatists haven’t held a mirror, from the Vietnam War (“Hair,” in 1967) to the Sept. 11 attacks (“The Guys,” December 2001). It’s what we do. The theater provides a fundamental way in which we process pain and learn to heal. And now, in this moment of such great loss and confusion, where do we go?

Privately, we are keeping our community intact through video chats and telephone calls. When one of us falls ill, the other members of our community rally around. While the “Moulin Rouge!” actor Danny Burstein was hospitalized and recovering from the coronavirus, I spoke to him numerous times every day. Right now, as another actor who has been infected, Nick Cordero, battles the illness, a group of his friends hold a daily online gathering to pray, commune and dance to his original music.

Publicly, our analogue art form has gone digital — play readings over Zoom, musical performances via Instagram Live and the proliferation of new podcasts. Theater people are nothing if not resourceful when it comes to reaching an audience.

Our ability to connect with audiences and one another through technology is useful, but I miss the real thing. I long to hail a cab, head to Midtown, hand over my ticket, grab a Playbill and settle into my seat, as a thousand strangers and I breathlessly wait for the lights to go down and the curtain to go up.