The Baltimore Waltz

The Baltimore Waltz is a 1990 play by American playwright Paula Vogel. A satire of the prejudices that surrounded the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the play follows American schoolteacher Anna as she learns that she is dying of “Acquired Toilet Disease,” and embarks on a sex-fuelled trip around Europe with her brother, Carl, who still hopes that a cure will be found. Gradually, it becomes clear that this story is a fantasy spun by Anna and Carl in the latter’s hospital room, where he is dying of AIDS-related complications.

As well as an angry satire, The Baltimore Waltz is a tribute to the author’s brother (also named Carl), who died under the same circumstances as his fictional counterpart. Shortly before his last illness, he had asked Vogel to accompany him on a trip to Europe. Vogel was unavailable for the trip, and when she later learned of his terminal diagnosis, she regretted the missed opportunity. The play is dedicated “To the memory of Carl—because I cannot sew.” The play text includes a letter written by Carl Vogel to his sister, which Vogel encourages directors to reproduce in their staging of the play. The letter provides light-hearted instructions for Carl’s memorial service: “Open casket, full drag.”

After a workshop at the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, the play was first staged at the Alley Theatre in Houston in 1992.



The play opens as schoolteacher Anna is diagnosed with ATD, or “Acquired Toilet Disease.” She is told that this disease is acquired by sitting on the seat of a toilet that has been used by children. It is a national epidemic, but the authorities have turned a blind eye to it. An official announces: “We are acknowledging the urgency of the dread disease by recognizing it as our eighty-second national health priority.”

ATD is fatal. Anna quits her job and begins planning a trip to Europe. She invites her brother, Carl, because he speaks several European languages fluently. The siblings are close, although as siblings do, they occasionally rub each other the wrong way.

Carl carries a toy bunny with him everywhere the siblings go:



“(Carl grabs a stuffed rabbit and thrusts it in Anna’s suitcase.)
Anna: What are you doing?
Carl: Can’t leave bunny behind.
Anna: What is a grown man like you doing with a stuffed rabbit?
Carl: I can’t sleep without bunny.
Anna: I didn’t know you slept with…stuffed animals.
Carl: There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

It emerges that he hopes a cure can be found for Anna’s disease, and he has brought the bunny because it is his most precious possession: he reasons that he will be able to exchange it for the “miracle drug.”

ATD is non-communicable, so Anna has no qualms about enjoying the pleasures of sex in her final month. She insists that one of the stages of grief is “lust.” In each country the siblings visit, she sleeps with a different man. All these men are played by a character identified in the text as “The Third Man” (which is one of many references to the film of that title, starring Orson Welles). Anna and Carl dutifully visit museums, tourist attractions, and restaurants, but Anna’s major focus is on seducing men. Amongst her lovers are a waiter, a revolutionary, a virgin, and a fifty-year-old “Little Dutch Boy.”



At first, Carl enjoys his sister’s carefree attitude, but her absorption in sex only escalates, until Carl starts to resent how little time Anna is spending with him, leaving him to visit monuments with no one but his stuffed bunny for company. He confronts her: why are you spending so much time chasing sex? Do you think you might be hiding from the reality of your situation?

Meanwhile, the Third Man embroils Anna and Carl in a madcap thriller plot, as Carl delves into the black-market seeking Anna’s miracle cure. This plot makes less and less sense as it progresses, and gradually, we come to realize that the plot is Anna’s way of spinning out her denial: in reality, it is Carl who is dying, and Anna is failing to confront that reality, instead spinning a yarn about the trip to Europe they never took together. Anna prepares a slideshow of their European trip: every image shows Baltimore and the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The play turns to the real situation as Anna is forced to acknowledge the truth: Carl is dead. In the play’s final moment, Anna and Carl—or his spirit—waltz across the stage in a loving embrace.



Besides exploring the AIDS crisis and the poverty of the US government’s official response, The Baltimore Waltz is also a meditation on sibling love, sex, death, denial, and the way that we live on in the memory of our loved ones. Its initial production was warmly received as “a loving tribute and political statement,” although some reviewers also noted that the tonal transition from “rollicking farce” to “whimsical melodrama” landed awkwardly (New York Magazine). The play continues to be performed in high-profile venues, most recently in an Off-Broadway production starring Kristen Johnson as Anna.