Angels in America
- Physical Location
- Mostly New York City, with a few scenes in Salt Lake City, Moscow and an airliner flying to San Francisco, along with others in Heaven, Hell, dream sequences and places imagined by the characters
Prior returns from Heaven to his hospital room, where his friends are asleep; Louis asks Prior if he can come back to him, but Prior says no; Harper leaves Joe forever, and boards a flight to San Francisco; Louis, Prior, Belize and Hannah reconvene at the Bethesda Fountain four years later, as Prior defiantly proclaims his desire to keep living
Hoesengurg Trial
- Time Space
- October 1985 to February 1986, with an epilogue in February 1990
- A countdown to millennium
- Perestroika movement in russia (name of part two)
- Angels
- Prior - In another, literally progressive trend, Prior embodies the rejection of conservatism and stasis and the embrace of a painful but necessary spirit of change. Prior's connection to stasis is rooted in his very being: in his ancient, respectable bloodlines and in "The End" inscribed in his veins, whether in reference to his AIDS or to the homosexuality that will leave him childless. But by rejecting his Angel-imposed prophecy, Prior becomes the prophet of an alternate philosophy that the play shares. His speech in Heaven is the clearest statement of the theme of stasis versus change that predominates throughout the play, and the firmest rejection of stasis offered throughout.
- Kushner employs a stereotypical image of the Jew in drawing Roy as a comment on anti-Semitism and prevailing images of Jewish people. Stripped of his telephone and his New York moxie, Roy almost resembles Shylock of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice—the heartless, greedy middleman who cares only for money and self-promotion. With his back-channel access and wheeler-dealer savvy, Roy also fits with more modern stereotypes of Jews as quietly influential overlords. Kushner does not try to obscure this linkage—he revels in it. The first scene in which Roy appears announces him as a grandly over-the-top villain for whom subtlety is less important than showmanship. By making Roy the cousin of these Jewish stereotypes, the play ironically highlights his own ill- concealed anti-Semitism and homophobia. Roy assumes he is persecuted for his Judaism in part because he does not like other Jews; part of what fuels his hatred of Ethel is her Jewishness (likewise, his attraction to Joe is indivisible from Joe's image as an all-American Gentile). But, the play suggests, what makes Roy a monster is not his Judaism but his prejudice, ironically targeted at his own. The traces of Judaism or homosexuality in Roy's persona (humorously hinted at in his first scene, for instance, by his affection for the musical La Cage Aux Folles) cannot be eradicated, and in death his link to his ancestral communities only grows stronger. But while he lives, Roy's isolation from his natural identity contributes to his twisted villainy and his unprofessed but profound loneliness.
- Of all the characters in Angels in America, Louis most resembles Tony Kushner: a young, progressive, Jewish New Yorker whose wordiness feels like an affectionate parody of the playwright's own rambling prose style. While it is always problematic, albeit tempting, to equate author with character, we can at least infer from the similarity between Louis and Kushner that Kushner does not intend Louis to be seen as a heartless villain, as some readers have proposed. It would be easy enough to reduce Louis to a caricature—the idealist who loudly discusses virtue but reneges on his own responsibilities. Louis's actions are clearly condemned: his abandonment of Prior is weak, selfish and insensitive. But because the hardships of his situation are painted so vividly that the audience can understand Louis's failings and empathize with him. Caring for Prior is complicated and excruciating, and Louis's guilt is genuine.
He walks out on Prior with his eyes open, aware of the callousness of his action (despite a few petty attempts to justify himself) yet brave enough to do what he feels he must.
Opening image
- Rabi standing over a coffin talking to the congregation
Closing image
- meteor hurtles towards the earth as the projectile approaches, and a angel comes down and hovers above the bed
Political
- A shift into symbolism, making something large to bring to forefront
- Realism used as a attack on a person or subject, reinforcing what is perceived as the norm
- how we understand who we are in the world, living collectively etc
- Tony Kushner’s sexuality, “theatre doesn’t just reflect reality” - “Theatre became under scrutiny” as the realism scrutinised and isolated of the LGBTQ community
- Theatre is a display of what you want to be true not what is true
- May be reasons that people are dissatisfied with realism as it doesn’t display them correctly.
- Ghetto Play formed by black culture which is both attacked and supported because it may not resemble the correct reality for other black people which didn’t share the ghetto reality
Work to do
- write a scene that is realistic then disrupted - people places and things
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