By Toma Lynn Smith
“Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches” lands at the University of Louisville’s Playhouse on Nov. 14.
Set in the mid-1980s in New York City, the play will introduce a Jewish gay man Louis Ironson, his AIDS inflicted partner Prior Walter, Republican Mormon Joe Pitt, his mentor Roy Cohn and his “pill-popping” wife Harper.
Along with these characters, a story of humor and reality will be told with the issues of Mormonism, homosexuality, plagues, politics and the division of rich and poor, particularly with healthcare.
This is from the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning two-part play, “Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes.”
‘National themes’ it may be, but the play will speak the unheard voices in American society. It will show the truth and cost of the American dream. There is no sugar coating here, only the rawness of America. Playwright Tony Kushner said he wants the audience to relate to the marginalized.
A major role of the play is that of lawyer Roy Cohn, a non-fictional character placed appropriately in this play.
Cohn is a brutal political figure who assisted the McCarthyism efforts and who had sex with men but claimed he was not gay. Like Cohn, “Angels” is a play that brings questions. The audience is left to fill in the blanks. English professor Andrew Rabin said, “What you’re suppose to do is leave the theater and work positively for change in the world.”
Last month, he presented the seminar, “The Angel of History in the Work of Tony Kushner” for U of L’s English department 2007-2008 Book In Common program.
Rabin said that theater is to provide more than just enjoyment, it is to make audience members think. “If it makes the audience uncomfortable, all the better.”
Some of that uncomfort will be showing the real side of AIDS, not just a red ribbon people wear to show their support. The physical reality of it will be shown. In addition to this disease, other topics include cross-dressing, drug abuse and death.
The director and Theatre Arts Acting Chair Rinda Frye said this play was written for her.
Part of her life she was as a Mormon, once married to a Jewish man, and currently an activist for gay rights. Frye had dinner with Kushner while he was in Louisville and told him, “You don’t know me, but you wrote this play for me.”
As part of the Book In Common, Theatre Arts Chair Professor Russell Vandenbroucke interviewed him publicly.
Before this, he met with the cast of the U of L production. Frye said Kushner was very receptive. He inquired about who would play the role of Cohn, since this is an elder character and the play is performed by college students.
The answer is theatre arts graduate student Gerry Rose, who said this play offers an opportunity for “self evaluation” regarding how society is perceived. Frye said, “There are layers and layers and layers, you don’t get to the bottom.” A&S Life of the Mind stated that Kushner “rejects ideology in favor of what he calls ‘a dialectically shaped truth.'” The “truth” will be revealed this Thursday.
