PL AYBILL angels in america
Angels in America PART I: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES PART II: PERESTROIKA Tony Kushner }{
a pproxim at e ru n n i 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
ARTIST NOTE: DAMIEN ATKINS Angels in America changed my life. Twice. I read it just after I’d come out, around 1994. Can you imagine? A play with gay men at the centre of a political and social epic, a play in which a gay man is finally chosen to speak on behalf of all of humanity. The play helped me to understand that everything is political, and politics can be life and death. Years later, as I began to rehearse the play, I realized that Angels in America is also (and perhaps most importantly) a call to citizenship, a desperate cry for all the living to care more about each other – to find in our lives, and in our words, more compassion. The play implores us – dares us – to have as much compassion for Roy Cohn, who says and does unspeakable things, as we do for Prior and Harper and Louis and everyone else. AIDS isn’t over. Every year millions of people die because they can’t afford the anti-retrovirals that will keep them alive. Even those who can afford the care they need still face discrimination and hate and neglect. And the competing forces of collectivism and individualism – with their consonant political expressions and machinations – are still engaged in a fierce struggle for the soul of humanity. Which means that Angels in America is not a period piece. Like The Glass Menagerie, The Crucible, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and other classics, this play speaks with a voice as loud and as vital as the day it was written.
In addition to the eight actors you will see onstage, there is a very skilled running crew that works to bring this play to you. They are listed in your programme but their contribution is so extreme they deserve to be named here as well: Arwen, Emily, Emma, Natalie, Jacqueline, Erika, Benn, Megan, Zach, Syd - every single one as deeply committed as the actors to giving voice to Tony Kushner’s fierce, agonized, devastating and devastatingly hopeful play. And there are ghosts too. There is, of course, not nearly enough space, not by a mile, to list all the people who died and are dying from this plague – some of them lovingly cared for, and some of them alone and in horrific pain. We cannot name them all here. But we will do our best to carry their spirits with us tonight as we labour to bring this story to life for you. Because of them, we know: angels are real. DAMIEN ATKINS, Prior Walter in Angels in America
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
Richard Feren
Director
Sound Designer
Lorenzo Savoini
Arwen MacDonell
Simon Fon
Fight Director
Kelly McEvenue
Set & Costume Designer
Production Stage Manager
Alexander Coach
Bonnie Beecher
Sarah Miller
Dialect Coach
Barbara Nowakowski
Natalie Swiercz, Emma Zulkoskey
Lighting Designer
Assistant Stage Manager
Diane Pitblado
Stu Cox
ZFX Flying Director
Emily Mewett
Apprentice Stage Manager
SOULPEPPER PRODUC T ION Jacqueline Robertson Cull
Head of Hair & Makeup
Erika Connor
First Hand
Gulay Cokgezen, Ilana Harendorf, Ina Kerklaan
L ead Wardrobe C oordinator
Stitchers
Susan Dicks, Geoff Hughes
Millinery
Cutters
Kaz Maxine
Dressers
Mike Keays
Carpenter
Paul Boddam, Lisa Summers
Greg Chambers
Props Builder
Tracy Taylor Props Buyer
Karen Rodd
Wing Construction
Scenic Painters
s p e c ia l t h a n k s: Ca n adia n s tage , m a ry s p y r a k is.
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. c ov e r : r aqu e l du f f y. PHoto: c y l l a von t i e de m a n n
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 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 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, some actors play several characters, expected gender roles are reversed. 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 and he wrote through uncertainty and confusion, calling this anguish 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.
advantage of the “marathon” opportunity to see both epic plays in a single exhilarating day. This year World Pride comes to Toronto. We welcome all the travellers who are making Angels a part of their festivities, to remember and re-connect with the spirit and struggles that paved the way for (among other things) the anarchic, inclusive, joyous parties that happen all over the world each June. People celebrate pride with their whole being. Tony Kushner says you make art with your whole being. His commitment and integrity resonate in every word of these plays. Welcome everyone to the embracing vision of Angels in America.
Play wright Biogr aph 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 was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. He is married to journalist Mark Harris.•
Angels in America returns to our stage because its combination of passion, brilliant storytelling and bold theatricality struck a chord with our audiences. Many people saw it more than once and we were thrilled that more than 2,900 people took
Tidbits & Background Notes by 2014 Soulpepper Resident Artist 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!