A few months ago, Jim Parsons had what he calls a "Come to Jesus" call with his manager and two of his agents. After more than six years away from theatre, the Emmy Award winning actor who plays savant-like theoretical physicist Sheldon on the hit CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" felt that it was time to scratch an itch he was having to return to the stage — and that his three-month summer hiatus from "Big Bang" was a good opportunity to do it. Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons, famed as the genius-nerd Sheldon of TV's "The Big Bang Theory," is among the stars of The Normal Heart on Broadway. Indeed, despite that unintentionally comic "theatre show" reference, Parsons is no stranger to the stage. He first got his start as an actor in the Houston theatre scene, where he was a founding member of the Infernal Bridegroom Theatre Co. and a regular at Stages Repertory Theatre, performing in everything from Samuel Beckett's Endgame to Guys and Dolls. He later studied classical theatre in a two-year program through the University of San Diego and the Old Globe, and assayed roles in everything from The Tempest at the Houston Shakespeare Festival to Tartuffe at La Jolla Playhouse. Set in the months between July 1981 and May 1984, The Normal Heartex amines the fraught, distressing and devastating advent of the AIDS epidemic in a frightened gay community, through the stories of a group of gay men living in New York City, one of the epicenters of the disease outbreak in its early days.