We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"The iconic photo of the Angel appearing for the first time in Prior’s bedroom was taken by Joan Marcus on a Saturday morning just as previews were beginning. Tensions were high and we literally had 90 minutes to take way too many photos. The LAST photo of the morning was the Angel shot. The stage crew literally propped Ellen McLaughlin up from behind on top of the headboard of the bed (because we didn’t have time to rig her and fly her in). We and Joan had five minutes. We were manic. Would we get the shot? Would we run out of time? Would Ellen be able to stand up on the bed with the weight of the wings? Today, when you think of Angels in America, one specific photograph comes to mind: The incredibly gorgeous, beautifully theatrical and now iconic photo that represents the show. And it was taken in five minutes."
–Chris Boneau, Press Representative
Chris Boneau, of Boneau/Bryan-Brown, was the press agent on the Broadway production of Angels in America
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Student Alexander Cavaluzzo
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"I first read Angels in America in 2005 when I was sixteen. At the time, I was a junior at a Catholic high school that has amongst its notable alumni the incendiary Fox News correspondent Bill O'Reilly. Obviously, as a queer Marxist, I was not in my element. Day in and day out I was immersed in reactionary, fundamentalist thought that I highly opposed. One day, in Barnes and Noble, I was in search for something that would counter the drivel I was hearing at school; I was familiar with Tony Kushner's work only through commercials for the 2003 mini-series, but I was aware it was a play that dealt with, among many other things, queer issues.
When I bought the last copy in the store, I read it in about a day. Words cannot describe the joy I felt. I cannot count how many times I've read and re-read the play, nor how many times I've watched and re-watched the mini-series. I've read extensive criticism of the play, purchased two playbills from the original Broadway production, watched a recording of the Broadway production of Millennium Approaches & Perestroika at the Lincoln Center Library, and, last year I got Milton Glaser's logo for the play tattooed on my right wrist (photo above).
I've have been desperately waiting my chance to see a live production of this fabulous piece of epic drama, and thanks to the Signature Theatre Company, I'll have that chance this fall."
-Alexander Cavaluzzo
Alexander Cavaluzzo is a 21-year old student and writing tutor
"I first read Angels in America in 2005 when I was sixteen. At the time, I was a junior at a Catholic high school that has amongst its notable alumni the incendiary Fox News correspondent Bill O'Reilly. Obviously, as a queer Marxist, I was not in my element. Day in and day out I was immersed in reactionary, fundamentalist thought that I highly opposed. One day, in Barnes and Noble, I was in search for something that would counter the drivel I was hearing at school; I was familiar with Tony Kushner's work only through commercials for the 2003 mini-series, but I was aware it was a play that dealt with, among many other things, queer issues.
When I bought the last copy in the store, I read it in about a day. Words cannot describe the joy I felt. I cannot count how many times I've read and re-read the play, nor how many times I've watched and re-watched the mini-series. I've read extensive criticism of the play, purchased two playbills from the original Broadway production, watched a recording of the Broadway production of Millennium Approaches & Perestroika at the Lincoln Center Library, and, last year I got Milton Glaser's logo for the play tattooed on my right wrist (photo above).
I've have been desperately waiting my chance to see a live production of this fabulous piece of epic drama, and thanks to the Signature Theatre Company, I'll have that chance this fall."
-Alexander Cavaluzzo
Alexander Cavaluzzo is a 21-year old student and writing tutor
Monday, August 23, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Playwright Christopher Shinn
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"I saw Angels in America on Broadway when I was 17. In the scene where Louis and Belize debate race and democracy, something very profound happened to me. I felt alive in a way I had never felt alive in a theatre before. I think I got so excited because I saw that you could both talk about the world in a play as well as use characters’ talking about the world to reveal their individual psychologies. Every play I’ve written has had my version of that scene in it."
-Christopher Shinn
Christopher Shinn is the writer of such plays as Four, Dying City and Where Do We Live
"I saw Angels in America on Broadway when I was 17. In the scene where Louis and Belize debate race and democracy, something very profound happened to me. I felt alive in a way I had never felt alive in a theatre before. I think I got so excited because I saw that you could both talk about the world in a play as well as use characters’ talking about the world to reveal their individual psychologies. Every play I’ve written has had my version of that scene in it."
-Christopher Shinn
Christopher Shinn is the writer of such plays as Four, Dying City and Where Do We Live
Thursday, August 19, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Graduate Student Elsa Sjunneson
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"My father died of AIDS in 1993.
Exploring theater responding to the AIDS epidemic has always been an emotional and sometimes challenging experience, and while I had read the play when I was fifteen, and seen the movie once when it came out, I'd had little experience with the stage play until I auditioned for it in my junior year of college. When I auditioned it was for the role of Harper - as I was a woman I assumed this was the only role I would be cast in. (The Angel never even occurred to me. That much stage presence just isn't in my personality)
When no men at my conservative Catholic university came to audition, I ended up cast in the role of Prior Walker. The director told me she cast me in that role because of my relentless empathy for the character. I felt - in reading for Prior - that I was giving life to my Father's voice one last time.
With sadness, I tell you that the production was never performed. The school's conservatism won over, and not only would no men audition because they were afraid of being perceived as gay, but because of the pro-homosexual themes, the school wouldn't allow it at all.
What I can say is that through performing that play, I was able to find some peace. Bit by bit I come to terms with the disease that killed my father, and piece by piece I make his memory firm in my mind - not in sadness, but as a remembrance of happiness."
-Elsa E. Sjunneson
Elsa E. Sjunneson is a 24 year-old graduate student.
"My father died of AIDS in 1993.
Exploring theater responding to the AIDS epidemic has always been an emotional and sometimes challenging experience, and while I had read the play when I was fifteen, and seen the movie once when it came out, I'd had little experience with the stage play until I auditioned for it in my junior year of college. When I auditioned it was for the role of Harper - as I was a woman I assumed this was the only role I would be cast in. (The Angel never even occurred to me. That much stage presence just isn't in my personality)
When no men at my conservative Catholic university came to audition, I ended up cast in the role of Prior Walker. The director told me she cast me in that role because of my relentless empathy for the character. I felt - in reading for Prior - that I was giving life to my Father's voice one last time.
With sadness, I tell you that the production was never performed. The school's conservatism won over, and not only would no men audition because they were afraid of being perceived as gay, but because of the pro-homosexual themes, the school wouldn't allow it at all.
What I can say is that through performing that play, I was able to find some peace. Bit by bit I come to terms with the disease that killed my father, and piece by piece I make his memory firm in my mind - not in sadness, but as a remembrance of happiness."
-Elsa E. Sjunneson
Elsa E. Sjunneson is a 24 year-old graduate student.
Monday, August 16, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Designer Wendall Harrington
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"In the early 80's, I started to lose people to something called "the gay cancer." Mostly there was silence, punctuated by funerals for young formerly vibrant men. No one knew - if they did they weren't talking. In 1986 (in need of a real job) I went to work for a major men's magazine. At many an editorial meeting I'd ask, as we prided ourselves on investigative journalism, ‘where was this story.’ I was told, 'gays did not read this magazine', and ‘it’s not a story for us.’ When Randy Shilts published And the Band Played On, I couldn't get it reviewed in the men’s magazine. I could not get Silence = Death and Act Up into the magazine. More men were dying, and now some of them very dear. Everyone was afraid. Eventually the men's magazine and I had a parting of the ways - it was about 1988. The last thing I did was edit a piece by Randy Shilts that got into the men’s magazine and then into Best American Essays of that year. Still there was more silence than action.
Some time later, I think it was John Conklin who gave me the script to read after he designed it on the west coast. He praised it, and Conklin praises few of this century's writers. Reading it, my ceiling cracked and an angel came in to touch me. I was opened. To this day, I can’t entirely say what it is about, but it is not silent, it is not cracking wise about Rock Hudson; it takes something serious seriously and I am grateful.
It made a stir, it made people confront, it broke the silence. I am forever indebted.
To have the chance to participate in this production is a great gift (no matter what my agent says). I owe this play something - it confuses, confounds, and makes me rich, for I do not believe in silence, I believe in thrashing one’s way forward into illumination, and this play lets me feel not alone."
-Wendall Harrington
Wendall Harrington is the projection designer for Signature Theatre Company's production of Angels in America
"In the early 80's, I started to lose people to something called "the gay cancer." Mostly there was silence, punctuated by funerals for young formerly vibrant men. No one knew - if they did they weren't talking. In 1986 (in need of a real job) I went to work for a major men's magazine. At many an editorial meeting I'd ask, as we prided ourselves on investigative journalism, ‘where was this story.’ I was told, 'gays did not read this magazine', and ‘it’s not a story for us.’ When Randy Shilts published And the Band Played On, I couldn't get it reviewed in the men’s magazine. I could not get Silence = Death and Act Up into the magazine. More men were dying, and now some of them very dear. Everyone was afraid. Eventually the men's magazine and I had a parting of the ways - it was about 1988. The last thing I did was edit a piece by Randy Shilts that got into the men’s magazine and then into Best American Essays of that year. Still there was more silence than action.
Some time later, I think it was John Conklin who gave me the script to read after he designed it on the west coast. He praised it, and Conklin praises few of this century's writers. Reading it, my ceiling cracked and an angel came in to touch me. I was opened. To this day, I can’t entirely say what it is about, but it is not silent, it is not cracking wise about Rock Hudson; it takes something serious seriously and I am grateful.
It made a stir, it made people confront, it broke the silence. I am forever indebted.
To have the chance to participate in this production is a great gift (no matter what my agent says). I owe this play something - it confuses, confounds, and makes me rich, for I do not believe in silence, I believe in thrashing one’s way forward into illumination, and this play lets me feel not alone."
-Wendall Harrington
Wendall Harrington is the projection designer for Signature Theatre Company's production of Angels in America
Thursday, August 12, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Student Blake Pruitt
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"I received a copy of the Angels in America play from a friend a few months ago as a 17th birthday gift. I'd heard her rave about, I'd heard about Tony Kushner, and I'd heard about the HBO special. What I hadn't heard about was how much of an impact the words Tony Kushner wrote would have on me. I never thought I would be able to feel, and cry, just from reading a play as much as I did while reading Angels in America. I'm so glad that my first experience with the play was reading it, which was of course followed by watching the HBO movie with the same friend. Both of us will be seeing the Signature Theatre production in January."
-Blake Pruitt
Blake Pruitt is a 17 year-old high school student.
"I received a copy of the Angels in America play from a friend a few months ago as a 17th birthday gift. I'd heard her rave about, I'd heard about Tony Kushner, and I'd heard about the HBO special. What I hadn't heard about was how much of an impact the words Tony Kushner wrote would have on me. I never thought I would be able to feel, and cry, just from reading a play as much as I did while reading Angels in America. I'm so glad that my first experience with the play was reading it, which was of course followed by watching the HBO movie with the same friend. Both of us will be seeing the Signature Theatre production in January."
-Blake Pruitt
Blake Pruitt is a 17 year-old high school student.
Monday, August 9, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Director Leigh Silverman
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"In 1993 I was in college, and seeing Angels made me, and scores of theater students like me, believe in the vitality, the urgency, and the possibilities of theater. Angels existed on Broadway with such brazen theatricality and gayness and guts, it seemed like the most thrilling night of theater imaginable. It was a rally and a revelation. Oh, but now, all these years later, what really gets me excited is the structure! Oh the mechanics! Now I can see the bones, the way the writing teases and delights, all the while holding tight around your throat. Angels has become an icon, and the standard against which plays are measured."
-Director Leigh Silverman
Leigh Silverman is a director whose credits include Well on Broadway and Coraline at MCC.
"In 1993 I was in college, and seeing Angels made me, and scores of theater students like me, believe in the vitality, the urgency, and the possibilities of theater. Angels existed on Broadway with such brazen theatricality and gayness and guts, it seemed like the most thrilling night of theater imaginable. It was a rally and a revelation. Oh, but now, all these years later, what really gets me excited is the structure! Oh the mechanics! Now I can see the bones, the way the writing teases and delights, all the while holding tight around your throat. Angels has become an icon, and the standard against which plays are measured."
-Director Leigh Silverman
Leigh Silverman is a director whose credits include Well on Broadway and Coraline at MCC.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Actor Billy Porter
We continue our series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Click here and continue checking back for more words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
1982.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I sit down to dinner with my family, as I always do just in time for the six o’clock news. I’m twelve years old and usually completely uninterested in anything the newscaster has to say. This day is different. This day feels complicated. Insistent. Serene. Terrifying.
The sun is setting after a long day of summer rain hashing it out with the Ms. Humidity. The result; a gray high sky filled with clouds that resemble patches of cotton candy with mauve shafts of light seeping through to earth below.
“There’s a new deadly disease that seems to be afflicting homosexual men mainly in New York City and San Francisco,” the newscaster reported. “No one knows what’s causing the outbreak or why the syndrome seems to be targeting homosexual men…” Homosexual? I had never heard the term before, but some how I knew exactly what it meant and that I was going to…
Oh, God! What have I…? Cold sweat.
I excused myself from the table and retreated to my closet.
Literal. Metaphoric.
For you see, my bedroom closet was the place of solace for me.
My closet was a sanctuary where I could try on my Aunt Sharon’s high-heels without being judged. Or experiment with the neighborhood boys curious about the touch. Or refine my solo for Sunday morning service.
My Closet. My Secret. My Shame.
And now my hiding place was in jeopardy of being exposed. Obliterated. I was a homosexual and I was going to die!
I continued for the next decade living in faggot-limbo. Never being “butch” enough to actually “hide” in any structured “closet,” in plain sight, and way too afraid and confused to stand inside my own terrifying yet glaringly transparent truth.
And then I wandered into a preview performance of Angels In America: Millennium Approaches at The Walter Kerr theatre in 1993. From the moment the curtain rose, I was in utter shock. Disbelief. Speechless. Breathless. FINALLY, someone had distilled into three-and-a-half hours of exquisite art what I had been trying to express all my life.
Harper:
When you pray, what do you pray for?
Joe:
I pray for God to crush me, break me up into little pieces and start all over again.
Harper:
Oh. Please. Don’t pray for that.
Joe:
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don’t really remember the story, or why the wrestling – just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is… a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I’m… It’s me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It’s not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God’s. But you can’t not lose.
As the tears gushed from my eyes like an illegally unplugged fire hydrant, I felt the weight of a thousand Sunday’s lifting off my shoulders. This piece gave me language, encompassed my pain and spoke my truth to the world when I could not. I’m a better artist, a better HUMAN BEING. I’m proud to be Black, Gay and Christian in America. I’m braver than I ever thought I could be. Thank you Mr. Kushner – you saved my life!
Billy Porter plays Belize in Signature Theatre Company's production of Angels in America
1982.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I sit down to dinner with my family, as I always do just in time for the six o’clock news. I’m twelve years old and usually completely uninterested in anything the newscaster has to say. This day is different. This day feels complicated. Insistent. Serene. Terrifying.
The sun is setting after a long day of summer rain hashing it out with the Ms. Humidity. The result; a gray high sky filled with clouds that resemble patches of cotton candy with mauve shafts of light seeping through to earth below.
“There’s a new deadly disease that seems to be afflicting homosexual men mainly in New York City and San Francisco,” the newscaster reported. “No one knows what’s causing the outbreak or why the syndrome seems to be targeting homosexual men…” Homosexual? I had never heard the term before, but some how I knew exactly what it meant and that I was going to…
Oh, God! What have I…? Cold sweat.
I excused myself from the table and retreated to my closet.
Literal. Metaphoric.
For you see, my bedroom closet was the place of solace for me.
My closet was a sanctuary where I could try on my Aunt Sharon’s high-heels without being judged. Or experiment with the neighborhood boys curious about the touch. Or refine my solo for Sunday morning service.
My Closet. My Secret. My Shame.
And now my hiding place was in jeopardy of being exposed. Obliterated. I was a homosexual and I was going to die!
I continued for the next decade living in faggot-limbo. Never being “butch” enough to actually “hide” in any structured “closet,” in plain sight, and way too afraid and confused to stand inside my own terrifying yet glaringly transparent truth.
And then I wandered into a preview performance of Angels In America: Millennium Approaches at The Walter Kerr theatre in 1993. From the moment the curtain rose, I was in utter shock. Disbelief. Speechless. Breathless. FINALLY, someone had distilled into three-and-a-half hours of exquisite art what I had been trying to express all my life.
Harper:
When you pray, what do you pray for?
Joe:
I pray for God to crush me, break me up into little pieces and start all over again.
Harper:
Oh. Please. Don’t pray for that.
Joe:
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don’t really remember the story, or why the wrestling – just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is… a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I’m… It’s me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It’s not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God’s. But you can’t not lose.
As the tears gushed from my eyes like an illegally unplugged fire hydrant, I felt the weight of a thousand Sunday’s lifting off my shoulders. This piece gave me language, encompassed my pain and spoke my truth to the world when I could not. I’m a better artist, a better HUMAN BEING. I’m proud to be Black, Gay and Christian in America. I’m braver than I ever thought I could be. Thank you Mr. Kushner – you saved my life!
Billy Porter plays Belize in Signature Theatre Company's production of Angels in America
Monday, August 2, 2010
ANGELS IN AMERICA Thoughts -- Playwright Romulus Linney
This is the first in a series of posts featuring people's thoughts on the power and impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Continue checking back for words from Broadway cast members, our current cast and creative team, more of Signature’s past Playwrights-in-Residence, and others in the theatre community. We also want to hear from YOU -- click here to find out how you can contribute.
"The soaring theatricality of Angels in America is justly celebrated. What I celebrate most is its sane good humor as it hits its targets with devastating force, targets that until Tony Kushner showed them to us, we did not know existed."
-Playwright Romulus Linney
Romulus Linney was the founding Playwright-in-Residence at Signature Theatre Company during the 1991-92 season.
"The soaring theatricality of Angels in America is justly celebrated. What I celebrate most is its sane good humor as it hits its targets with devastating force, targets that until Tony Kushner showed them to us, we did not know existed."
-Playwright Romulus Linney
Romulus Linney was the founding Playwright-in-Residence at Signature Theatre Company during the 1991-92 season.
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