Robert Chesley (1943-1990) was a pioneering gay playwright who created homoerotic plays. In the late 1970s, he moved to New York City, proclaimed his homosexuality, and pursued an openly gay approach to theater and writing. In 1980, his first one-act play Hell, I Love You was produced. His play Night Sweat (1984) was one of the first to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in a theatrical production. In 1986, Chesley's play Jerker or the Helping Hand was the center of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) censorship attempt after excerpts aired on a radio broadcast. Chesley wrote numerous plays throughout his career, and a few of them were published in books. Dogs Plays and Private Theatricals: Morning, Noon, and Night were written during the final years of his life, but produced after his death of an AIDS-related illness in 1990.