PL AYBILL angels in america
Angels in America PART I: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES PART II: PERESTROIKA Tony Kushner ( USA 1991 )
}{ a pproxim at e runni ng t im e: pa rt i: 3 hou rs long w i t h t wo 15 m i nu t e i n t er m issions pa rt ii: 3 hou rs long w i t h t wo 15 m i nu t e i n t er m issions
TIDBITS
ARTIST NOTE: DIEGO MATAMOROS Somewhere in the middle of rehearsals - I catch my breath and remind myself to jot a few thoughts down about this incredibly powerful and inspired piece of theatre that is Angels in America. The cast, creative team, and all our crew are both inspired and inspiring (on a daily basis) and Albert is leading everyone fearlessly on a path to greater insight and understanding of this great play. It’s been almost twenty years now that Albert and I have been creative partners and I never cease to be in awe of his ability to guide and lead this company (and all of its invaluable mandates) with care and love, insight and wisdom. To be asked by such a dear friend and mentor and lifetime collaborator to play the role of the demonic Roy Cohn in this epic adventure is nothing less than ‘as good as it gets’. Epic theatre for epic times. The central themes of this great work are the strength of a community to wrestle and overcome the darkest times, the darkest of plagues, be they in us, in others, relational or physical. We shall overcome.
• R ight
after Angels in America opened on Broadway, Kushner was approached in the subway by somebody who had heard that Roy Cohn was one of the characters. The man wanted to know if his grandfather was also in the play. “Who’s your grandfather?” Kushner asked. “Carlo Gambino.” When Kushner said Gambino didn’t appear in the play, the man relaxed a little and told a couple of stories about Roy Cohn, who he knew personally. The next day, a box of very nice Italian red wine was delivered to Kushner’s front door.
• A ngels
in America has been adapted for opera and turned into an HBO miniseries, which was directed by Mike Nichols. Kushner wrote the script for the miniseries, for which he won an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 2004.
• C ity
University of New York trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld quashed a plan to give Kushner an honourary doctorate because of Kushner’s comments on Israel. Public outcry forced CUNY to reverse Wiesenfeld’s refusal, and Kushner got the degree in 2011.
• T ony
Kushner and Mark Harris’ commitment ceremony in 2003 was the first same-sex union to be featured in the Vows Column of the New York Times.
More life.
DIEGO MATAMOROS, Roy Cohn in Angels In America p roduc t ion s p on sor
CREATIVE TEAM
ANGELS IN AMERICA
CAS T Troy Adams Belize & others
Damien Atkins
Prior Walter & others
Raquel Duffy
The Angel & others
Diego Matamoros
Roy M. Cohn & others
Michelle Monteith
Harper Amaty Pitt & others
Nancy Palk
Hannah Porter Pitt & others
Gregory Prest
Louis Ironson & others
Mike Ross
Joseph Porter Pitt & others
Produc tion Albert Schultz Director
Lorenzo Savoini
Richard Feren
ZFX Flying Director
Simon Fon
Arwen MacDonell
Set & Costume Designer
Fight Director
Bonnie Beecher
Alexander Coach
Lighting Designer
Stu Cox
Sound Designer
Kelly McEvenue
Production Stage Manager
Sarah Miller
Emily Mewett
Apprentice Stage Manager
Simon Rossiter
Assistant Lighting Designer
Assistant Stage Manager
SOULPEPPER PRODUC T ION Jacqueline Robertson Cull
Head of Hair & Makeup
Janet Pym
Wardrobe Coordinator
Susan Dicks Geoff Hughes
Cutters
Barbara Nowakowski
First Hand
Culay Cokgezen, Ilana Harendorf, Ina Kerklaan
Stitchers
Kaz Maxine
Millinery
Natalie Swiercz, Emma Zulkoskey
Dressers
Mike Keays
Carpenter
Paul Boddam, Lisa Summers
Greg Chambers
Props Builder
Tracy Taylor Props Buyer
Karen Rodd
Wing Construction
Scenic Painters
sou l p e p p e r ac k now l e d ge s t h e ge n e rou s s u p p ort of
s p e c i a l t h a n k s: T h e r e s a Tova , H a nn a h M i l l e r , F ly i ng Eff e c t s p rov i de d by Z F X , Inc ., M s. Mon t e i t h’s s u i t i ng p rov i de d by C r aw for d B oy s C l ot h i ng w w w.c r aw for db oy s.c om
Produced through special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc. The script to this play may be purchased from B P P I at www.BroadwayPlayPubl.com Angels in America was developed by Center Theater Group, Eureka Theater Company, Mark Taper Forum, Royal National Theater, and the Walter Kerr Theater.
i l l u s t r at ion : b r i a n r e a
BACKGROUND NOTES
“The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction. From such nets of souls societies, the social world, human life springs.”
T
he seed of this “Gay Fantasia on National Themes” came to Tony Kushner in a dream in 1985, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the United States. The first of the writer’s friends to get the disease had just been diagnosed. The terror and devastation of the epidemic were still in the future, as were the years of blood, sweat and maniacal re-writing Kushner would invest in what eventually became Angels in America. This seminal, sprawling pair of plays takes the intelligence of the audience as a given. Influenced particularly by Brecht’s Mother Courage, Kushner fearlessly explores and exposes the intersections of love and hate, religion and belief, the personal and the political in a robustly imagined community of souls in New York City at the end of the last century.
When Angels came out its epic, ambitious reach and frank examination of sex and homosexuality shocked some. Multiple perspectives are interwoven, overlap, and blend into one another, certain actors play several characters, expected gender roles are reversed. Some critics said the plays were too liberal: they accused Kushner of preaching to the choir and he didn’t deny it:
“The role of the preacher is... to help the faithful grapple with doubt. You go to the edge of what you’re certain about. You ask the congregation to come with you... no candle no map... you ask them to explore the darkness with you.” Kushner admits he didn’t know where he was going when he began writing these plays. He did know that he had to confront painful questions past the point where he felt secure, past the point of discomfort, in order to tell as much of the truth as he could. He wrote through uncertainty and confusion and he claims this anguish as a writer’s right, necessary to the act of creation. Plays are made, he says, from clashes, from “where one certainty collides with another certainty.”
For a six hour play, Angels is extremely economical. The story sweeps you up into its universe, connects you to these struggling, seeking, opinionated characters and time is suspended in the power of the storytelling. The community here is under siege: what each individual chooses to do matters greatly, how they decide to act has significance. There are life and death consequences to homophobia, to climate change, to whether we stay and help someone in need or whether we go. As Mother Courage asks: what can’t you stand? How long can’t you stand it? Tony Kushner says you make art with your whole being. That commitment and integrity resonate in every word of these plays. Welcome to the embracing vision of Angels in America.•
biograph y Anthony Robert “Tony” Kushner was born on July 16, 1956 in Manhattan. His parents, both classical musicians, moved the family to Lake Charles, Louisiana and he spent his childhood there, growing up, he says, with good progressive politics. He has said that belonging to a small Jewish community within a larger Christian one, and knowing from an early age that he was gay, taught him about how it feels to be “other”. He received a degree in medieval literature from Columbia University, taught in Louisiana for several years, then returned to New York City to pursue his MFA and write. Angels in America was his breakthrough. The two plays won a series of commendations including the Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards and two Drama Desk Awards. He’s adapted classics from Brecht to Corneille, collaborated several times with children’s book author Maurice Sendak, and won a Tony for his work on the musical Caroline or Change. Most recently, Kushner won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. He is married to Entertainment Weekly editor, Mark Harris.•
Tidbits and Background Notes by Paula Wing
THANK YOU FOR AT TENDING!
416 866 8666 soulpepper.ca Young Centre for the Performing Arts Toronto Distillery Historic District
Soulpepper Theatre Company is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Scenic Artists and Set Decorators employed by Soulpepper Theatre Company are represented by Local 828 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. •
Do stay in touch, and please pass the pepper!
Proud sponsor of Angels in America.
Registered trade-marks of Bank of Montreal.
®