Angels In Amercia: Millennnium Approaches
Tony Kushner, English, First Production- 1993, First Publication- 1993
http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=4569
Play Structure:
Three Acts, Act 1: 9 scenes
Act 2: 10 scenes
Act 3: 7 scenes
Cast Breakdown:
The play is written for eight actors, each of whom plays two or more roles. Kushner's doubling, as indicated in the published script, requires several of the actors to play the opposite sex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America:_A_Gay_Fantasia_on_National_Themes
Approximate Run Time:
3 Hours with two intermissions
http://www.broadway.com/shows/angels-america-millennium-approaches/story/
Genre Label:
Drama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America:_A_Gay_Fantasia_on_National_Themes
Playwright Biography:
Born in Manhattan in July of 1956, Tony Kushner grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana where his family moved after inheriting a lumber business. He earned a bachelors degree from Columbia University and later did postgraduate work at New York University. In the early 1980s, he founded a theater group and began writing and producing plays. In the early 1990s, he scored a monster hit with the epic, seven-hour, two-part, Broadway blockbuster Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes which earned for Kushner a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Evening Standard Award, two Olivier Award Nominations, the New York Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the LAMBDA Liberty Award for Drama. This groundbreaking play focuses on three households in turmoil: a gay couple, one of whom has AIDS; a Morman man coming to terms with his sexuality; and the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn, a historical figure who died of AIDS in 1986, denying his homosexuality all the way to his deathbed. Kushner has also written A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs! (from material not used in Angels in America), as well as several adaptations including Goethe's Stella, Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan, Corneille's the Illusion, and S. Ansky's The Dybbuk. His work has been produced at the Mark Taper Forum, the New York Shakespeare Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Hartford Stage Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center as well as theatres in over 30 countries across the globe. He is the recipient of a 1990 Whiting Foundation Writers Award and playwriting and directing fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Kushner is currently an adjunct faculty member of New York University's Dramatic Writing program.
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc51.html
Publication Information:
Theatre Communications Group, New York, 1993
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1050
Exegesis:
Roy M. Cohn- pg. 1638-
On February 20th 1927, Roy Marcus Cohn was born in New York City. He was born into a very political family, as his dad was a New York state judge and an important figure in the Democratic Party. He went to Columbia Law School and after he graduated college he used his connections to become Assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. In 1951 he was part of the trial in the prosecution of 11 leaders of the American Communist Party. In 1952 Roy Cohn was appointed chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate by Joseph McCarthy. Roy Cohn than recruited his best friend David Schine to become his chief consultant. After Cohn hired Schine rumors began circulating about Roy Cohn and David Schine’s and if they were having a sexual relationship. There sexual relationship than became public in the Los Vagas Sun on October 25, 1952. Then in October 1953 McCarthy began investigating communism in the military. Due to Joseph McCarthy’s claims after investigating, he tried to go against Secretary of the Army, Robert Stevens. President Eisenhower then decided it was time to bring out news on McCarthy. In this news it said that Roy Cohn tried to prevent David Schine from being drafted and this abused congressional privilege. After that failed, on December 15th, 1953, Drew Pearson who was a newspaper columnist published an article that claimed that Cohn tried to pressurize the Army to grant Schine special privileges.
In result of this there were Senate hearings against McCarthy and Cohn. McCarthy was then condemned from his political position in the Senate and Cohn was forced to resign. After Roy Cohn was forced to resign he than joined a law firm in New York, in which he worked at for many years. In the early 1980’s Roy Cohn learned that he had AIDS. He fought the disease for about 6 years but then on August 2nd 1986 he died. A quote that many people remember Roy Cohn saying was, "My idea of real power is not people who hold office. They're here today and gone tomorrow. Power means the ability to get things done. It stems from friendship in my case." His life was then made into a movie in 1992, called “Citizen Cohn.”
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/redscare/cohn.html
Rabbi-pg. 1638-
the chief religious official of a synagogue, trained usually in a theological seminary and duly ordained, who delivers the sermon at a religious service and performs ritualistic, pastoral, educational, and other functions in and related to his or her capacity as a spiritual leader of judaism and the Jewish community.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rabbi
Yarzheit Candle- pg. 1638-
The meaning of the word "Yahrzeit" is the one year anniversary of the death. The Yahrzeit Candle is also called a "memorial candle", and just as the name suggests, this is a special candle or electric bulb that is lit in the commemoration of a loved one's death. It is customary to light a Yahrzeit candle during the Shivah (a ritual in which the loved ones of the departed sit and mourn for the 7 days after the beloved passed away) at the house of the departed or at the place the mourners are sitting the Shivah, as well as on five different occasions during each year (according to the Hebrew calendar): the Yahrzeit, Yom Kippur, and the 3 pilgrimage festivals - Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot (every occasion in which the prayer of Yizkor (the Memorial service) is recited at the synagogue). This candle is traditionally lit by the parents, spouse, siblings and children of the departed both at home as well as at the grave-site, where there is a special box next to each grave that protects it from the wind.
http://www.judaica-guide.com/yahrzeit_candle/
WASPS- pg. 1641-
A White Anglo-Saxon Protestant - a person of English descent who follows one of the branches of Protestanism, typically Anglicanism (Church of England); Anglo-Saxon is not be mixed up with just Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon refers to the Germanic invaders who conquered England shortly after the Romans fell from power, thus it refers to strictly to English people and their descendants.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wasp%3Cwhite%20anglo-saxon%20protestant%3E
Ethel Rosenberg- pg. 1637-
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg was born September 28, 1915 in New York City to Barnet and Tessie Greenglass. Her father ran a repair shop for sewing machines, but was barely able to provide for his wife and four children. The Greenglass family lived in a shabby tenement that was unheated. Ethel, the only daughter, showed that she was a strong willed and intelligent girl. Ethel attended a religious school, Downtown Talmud Torah, and then Seward Park High School, where she graduated at the age of only 15. Ethel became a clerk for a shipping company immediately after finishing school. She remained at this job for the next four years until she was let go because of her role as the organizer of a strike of 150 women workers. Ethel was not just an activist at work, she was also interested in politics. Ethel joined the Young Communist League and eventually became a member of the American Communist Party. In addition to her clerk job, Ethel enjoyed singing, alone as well as with a choir. Ethel was waiting to go on stage to sing at a New Years Eve benefit when she first met Julius Rosenberg. The couple was married not long afterwards in the summer of 1939. Although mentally tough, Ethel Rosenberg's body was weak. She was not healthy enough to work after the Rosenberg's were married. Instead, Ethel stayed home with their two sons Michael and Robert. By the summer of 1950, Ethel's younger brother, David Greenglass, had named Julius as a participant in the spy ring. The FBI questioned her husband and eventually placed him under arrest. On August 11, 1950, Ethel Rosenberg was herself arrested. At trial Ruth Greenglass, Ethel's sister-in-law, implicated Ethel in the atomic spy ring by testifying that Ethel had been the one to type the notes provided by David Greenglass. This testimony sealed Ethel's fate. She was found guilty of espionage along with Julius Rosenberg and on April 5, 1951 was sentenced to death. For the next two years, Ethel Rosenberg lived on death row at Sing Sing prison maintaining her innocence and hoping for leniency. It never came. On June 19, 1953, Ethel was put to death in the electric chair.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ros_bero.htm
AIDS- pg. 1649-
HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus. It is the virus that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. CDC estimates that about 56,000 people in the United States contracted HIV in 2006.
There are two types of HIV, HIV-1 and HIV-2. In the United States, unless otherwise noted, the term “HIV” primarily refers to HIV-1. Both types of HIV damage a person’s body by destroying specific blood cells, called CD4+ T cells, which are crucial to helping the body fight diseases. Within a few weeks of being infected with HIV, some people develop flu-like symptoms that last for a week or two, but others have no symptoms at all. People living with HIV may appear and feel healthy for several years. However, even if they feel healthy, HIV is still affecting their bodies. All people with HIV should be seen on a regular basis by a health care provider experienced with treating HIV infection. Many people with HIV, including those who feel healthy, can benefit greatly from current medications used to treat HIV infection. These medications can limit or slow down the destruction of the immune system, improve the health of people living with HIV, and may reduce their ability to transmit HIV. Untreated early HIV infection is also associated with many diseases including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, liver disease, and cancer. Support services are also available to many people with HIV. These services can help people cope with their diagnosis, reduce risk behavior, and find needed services. AIDS is the late stage of HIV infection, when a person’s immune system is severely damaged and has difficulty fighting diseases and certain cancers. Before the development of certain medications, people with HIV could progress to AIDS in just a few years. Currently, people can live much longer - even decades - with HIV before they develop AIDS. This is because of “highly active” combinations of medications that were introduced in the mid 1990s.http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/basic/
Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a cancer-like disease. It originally was known as a disease affecting elderly men of Eastern European or Mediterranean background. KS also occurs in African men and people with a weakened immune system. The most common cause of KS now is HIV infection. KS is a sign of AIDS.
http://www.thebody.com/content/art6061.html
neo-Hegelian-
Absolute idealism is an ontologically monistic philosophy attributed to G. W. F. Hegel. It is Hegel's account of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole. Hegel asserted that in order for the thinking subject (human reason or consciousness) to be able to know its object (the world) at all, there must be in some sense an identity of thought and being. Otherwise, the subject would never have access to the object and we would have no certainty about any of our knowledge of the world. To account for the differences between thought and being, however, as well as the richness and diversity of each, the unity of thought and being cannot be expressed as the abstract identity "A=A". Absolute idealism is the attempt to demonstrate this unity using a new "speculative" philosophical method, which requires new concepts and rules of logic. According to Hegel, the absolute ground of being is essentially a dynamic, historical process of necessity that unfolds by itself in the form of increasingly complex forms of being and of consciousness, ultimately giving rise to all the diversity in the world and in the concepts with which we think and make sense of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-hegelian
Valium- pg. 1637-
Diazepam is used to relieve anxiety, muscle spasms, and seizures and to control agitation caused by alcohol withdrawal. Diazepam comes as a tablet, extended-release (long-acting) capsule, and concentrate (liquid) to take by mouth. Do not open, chew, or crush the extended-release capsules; swallow them whole. It is usually taken 1-4 times a day and may be taken with or without food. Follow the directions on your prescription label carefully, and ask your doctor or pharmacist to explain any part you do not understand. Take diazepam exactly as directed. Diazepam concentrate (liquid) comes with a specially marked dropper for measuring the dose. Ask your pharmacist to show you how to use the dropper. Dilute the concentrate in water, juice, or carbonated beverages just before taking it. It also may be mixed with applesauce or pudding just before taking the dose. Diazepam can be habit-forming. Do not take a larger dose, take it more often, or for a longer time than your doctor tells you to. Tolerance may develop with long-term or excessive use, making the drug less effective. This medication must be taken regularly to be effective. Do not skip doses even if you feel that you do not need them. Do not take diazepam for more than 4 months or stop taking this medication without talking to your doctor. Stopping the drug suddenly can worsen your condition and cause withdrawal symptoms (anxiousness, sleeplessness, and irritability). Your doctor probably will decrease your dose gradually.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000556/
Ronald Reagan- pg. 1644-
President of the United States from 1981-1989, Ronald Reagan was known as a staunch conservative, a cheery optimist, and an implacable foe of Soviet communism. Reagan began his career as a sports announcer on radio, then moved to Hollywood and became a movie star. Reagan made over fifty movies as a reliable supporting actor or benign leading man, but his real calling seemed to be in politics. He served as the governor of California (1967-75) and then in 1980 defeated Democrat Jimmy Carter to become the 40th U.S. president. He advocated lower taxes and higher defense spending, and aggressively challenged the Soviet Union with his rhetoric. His two terms in office were clouded by an exploding budget deficit, high unemployment and deep recession, and, in the last years, a back-door scheme to fund anti-communist forces in Central America -- the so-called Iran Contra affair that led to the trial and conviction (later overturned) of Lt. Col. Oliver North. Reagan, however, emerged from the troubles unscathed, and went on to become a hero of the Republican Party. He stepped down after two full terms and was succeeded by his vice-president, George Bush the elder. In 1994 Reagan announced that he suffered from Alzheimer's Disease. He spent the next ten years in seclusion and increasingly poor health until his death in 2004. Reagan married the actress Nancy Davis on 4 March 1952; he previously had been married to actress Jane Wyman from 1941-48... He had four children, Maureen and Michael (with Wyman) and Patricia and Ron Jr. (with Nancy Reagan)... In March of 1981, Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley, Jr., an unbalanced fan of actress Jodie Foster... For Reagan's 1994 letter to Americans about his Alzheimer's disease, see this page from the Reagan Library... Reagan wrote two autobiographies: Where's the Rest of Me? (1965, updated in 1981) and An American Life (1990)... In 2003 another actor became governor of California: Arnold Schwarzenegger... Reagan often spent time at Rancho del Cielo, his ranch north of Santa Barbara; the ranch was about 18 miles from the Neverland Ranch of pop star Michael Jackson.
http://www.answers.com/topic/ronald-reagan
Mormon- pg. 1639-
Mormon" is a term commonly applied to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church is sometimes inaccurately called the "Mormon Church" because its members believe that the Book of Mormon is an additional volume of scripture to the Bible. The Book of Mormon is named after Mormon, a fourth-century prophet-historian who compiled and abridged many records of his ancestors into the Book of Mormon. Mormons live and work in every state of the United States and throughout the world. They value their family, their communities and the countries where they reside. They actively participate in business and agriculture, education and the sciences, government, the entertainment industry and news media. They work in public service and professional fields and serve as ambassadors, legislators, judges, and CEOs. There are currently five U.S. senators, including the senate majority leader, who are Mormon.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the fourth-largest religious institution in America, with over 6 million members in the United States and a total of nearly 14 million worldwide. While the term "Mormon Church" has long been publicly applied to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a nickname, it is not an official title, and the Church encourages the use of the full authorized title. There are nearly 28,000 Mormon congregations worldwide, with meetings held in more than 180 languages, and Sunday services are open for anyone to attend. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is well known for its humanitarian work and has teamed up with Catholic Relief Services, the Red Cross, UNICEF, and many other agencies to help relieve suffering throughout the world. The Church also operates the world's largest genealogical library, located in Salt Lake City, and has one of the world's largest databases of online genealogical records. This database can be accessed for free by anyone at FamilySearch. Mormon was an actual historical figure in the Book of Mormon. He was a prophet, military general, and record keeper who lived about A.D. 311-385 on the American Continent. He was a military leader for most of his life, beginning at age fifteen. He also kept extensive historical and spiritual records of his people, who lived in the Americas. After recording the history of his own lifetime, he compiled and abridged the records, engraved on plates of gold, of previous prophets. These plates were part of the record from which the Prophet Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon in the early 19th century.
http://lds.org/topic/mormon/
Fable:
Act 1:
“Angels in America” tells the story of modern societal decline in the face of an upcoming new millennium. The story creates a web of life that links the central characters together. Joseph Pitt, an up and coming chief clerk for the Court of Appeals is married to an agoraphobic Valium addict named Harper. The marriage, deeply rooted in the traditions of the Mormon faith, is a complex web of lies about themselves and their wants.
Act 2:
While Joseph struggles with his own sexuality and Harper falls deeper into her dream world of hallucinations, the couple become separated both in intentions and in love. When Joseph is offered a new position in Washington to advance his career, the couple must come to an understanding…no matter what it might be. Meanwhile, a gay couple, Louis Ironson and Prior Walter must come to terms with the reality of being infected with HIV. As Prior’s health deteriorates. Louise is finding himself torn between the pain of watching his lover die and finding a new love in his new work associate, Joseph.
Act 3:
Both Harper and Prior are haunted by dreams and hallucinations, revealing to them what lies on the other side of their “threshold of reality” about their relationships and their own lives. The religious element of this play is propounded by the presence of The Angel, which is four divine emanations manifest in to One: Fluor, Phosphor, Lumen and Candle. The Angel will choose Prior to be the prophet of the new millennium to carry the message of truth to the masses.
Plot Summary:
Angels in America focuses on the stories of two troubled couples, one gay, one straight: "word processor" Louis Ironson and his lover Prior Walter, and Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt and his wife Harper. After the funeral of Louis's grandmother, Prior tells him that he has contracted AIDS, and Louis panics. He tries to care for Prior but soon realizes he cannot stand the strain and fear. Meanwhile, Joe is offered a job in the Justice Department by Roy Cohn, his right-wing, bigoted mentor and friend. But Harper, who is addicted to Valium and suffers anxiety and hallucinations, does not want to move to Washington.
The two couples' fates quickly become intertwined: Joe stumbles upon Louis crying in the bathroom of the courthouse where he works, and they strike up an unlikely friendship based in part on Louis's suspicion that Joe is gay. Harper and Prior also meet, in a fantastical mutual dream sequence in which Prior, operating on the "threshold of revelation," reveals to Harper that her husband is a closeted homosexual. Harper confronts Joe, who denies it but says he has struggled inwardly with the issue. Roy receives a different kind of surprise: At an appointment with his doctor Henry, he learns that he too has been diagnosed with AIDS. But Roy, who considers gay men weak and ineffectual, thunders that he has nothing in common with them—AIDS is a disease of homosexuals, whereas he has "liver cancer." Henry, disgusted, urges him to use his clout to obtain an experimental AIDS drug.
Prior's illness and Harper's terrors both grow worse. Louis strays from Prior's bedside to seek anonymous sex in Central Park at night. Fortunately, Prior has a more reliable caretaker in Belize, an ex-drag queen and dear friend. Prior confesses to Belize that he has been hearing a wonderful and mysterious voice; Belize is skeptical, but once he leaves we hear the voice speak to Prior, telling him she is a messenger who will soon arrive for him. As the days pass, Louis and Joe grow closer and the sexual tinge in their banter grows more and more obvious. Finally, Joe drunkenly telephones his mother Hannah in Salt Lake City to tell her that he is a homosexual, but Hannah tells him he is being ridiculous. Nonetheless, she makes plans to sell her house and come to New York to put things right. In a tense and climactic scene, Joe tells Harper about his feelings, and she screams at him to leave, while simultaneously Louis tells Prior he is moving out.
The disconsolate Prior is awakened one night by the ghosts of two ancestors who tell him they have come to prepare the way for the unseen messenger. Tormented by such supernatural appearances and by his anguish over Louis, Prior becomes increasingly desperate. Joe, equally distraught in his own way, tells Roy he cannot accept his offer; Roy explodes at him and calls him a "sissy." He then tells Joe about his greatest achievement, illegally intervening in the espionage trial of Ethel Rosenberg in the 1950s and guaranteeing her execution. Joe is shocked by Roy's lack of ethics. When Joe leaves, the ghost of Ethel herself appears, having come to witness Roy's last days on earth. In the climax of Part One, Joe follows Louis to the park, then accompanies him home for sex, while Prior's prophetic visions culminate in the appearance of an imposing and beautiful Angel who crashes through the roof of his apartment and proclaims, "The Great Work begins."
http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/angels/summary.html
Characters:
Prior Walter – A gay man with AIDS. Throughout the play, he experiences various heavenly visions. When the play begins, he is dating Louis Ironson. His best friend is a nurse named Belize.
Louis Ironson – Prior's boyfriend. Unable to deal with Prior's disease, he ultimately abandons him. He meets Joe Pitt and later begins a relationship with him.
Harper Pitt – A neurotic Mormon housewife with incessant Valium-induced hallucinations. After a revelation from Prior (whom she meets when his heavenly vision and her hallucination cross paths), she discovers that her husband is gay and struggles with it, considering it a betrayal of her marriage.
Joe Pitt – Harper's husband and a deeply closeted gay Mormon who works for Roy Cohn. Joe eventually abandons his wife for a relationship with Louis. Throughout the play, he struggles with his sexual identity.
Roy Cohn – A closeted gay lawyer, based on real life Roy Cohn. Just as in history, it is eventually revealed that he has contracted AIDS, which he insists is liver cancer in order to preserve his reputation.
Ethel Rosenberg – The ghost of a woman executed for being a Communist spy, based on the real life Ethel Rosenberg. She visits Roy, whom she blames for her conviction.
Hannah Pitt – Joe's mother. She moves to New York after her son drunkenly comes out to her on the phone. She arrives to find that Joe has abandoned his wife.
Belize – A former drag queen, he is Prior's ex-boyfriend and best friend. He later becomes Roy Cohn's nurse.
The Voice/Angel – A messenger from Heaven who visits Prior and tells him he's a prophet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America:_A_Gay_Fantasia_on_National_Themes#Characters
Martin Heller - A Justice Department official and political ally of Roy's. Martin is fundamentally spineless, allowing Roy to manipulate him in order to impress Joe and then taking the abuse that Roy heaps on him along with a blackmail threat.
Sister Ella Chapter - A real estate agent who handles the sale of Hannah's house in Salt Lake. Like Emily, she urges her friend to settle down and remain at home.
Prior I and Prior II - Prior's ancestors who are summoned from the dead to help prepare the way for the Angel's arrival. Prior I is a medieval farmer, Prior II a seventeenth- century Londoner who is more sophisticated and cosmopolitan in outlook. Both men died of the plague.
Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov - The World's Oldest Living Bolshevik, who delivers the tirade that marks the beginning of Perestroika. Prelapsarianov criticizes the pettiness of modern American life, the pointless quality of life in the absence of a governing theory.
The Mormon Mother - A dummy from the diorama at the Mormon Visitor's Center who is silenced while her husband and son speak. The Mormon mother comes to life, however, and accompanies Harper while sharing painful truths about life and change.
Characters and Casting:
Roy M. Cohn, Prior 2: Male
Joseph Porter Pitt, Prior 1, Eskimo: Male
Harper Amaty Pitt, Martin Heller: Female
Louis Ironson: Male
Prior Walter, Man in Park: Male
Hannah Porter Pitt, Rabbi Isisor Chemelwitz, Henry, Ethel Rosenberg: Female
Belize, Mr. Lies: Male
The casting for this particular show must stay true to the notes set down by the playwright, Tony Kushner. One of the many particularities of Angels in America is that each of the eight main actors has one or several other minor roles to play: for example, the actor playing the nurse Emily also embodies the Angel of America. And in this multiple doubling of roles, the gender of each character is deliberately played upon: the actor playing Hannah, Joe's mother, also plays the part of the Rabbi. This is what is referred to as "Genderfuck", which shows a dramatist's deliberate will to throw some light on the arbitrariness and elasticity of the traditional notions of gender categories, thereby proved to be social constructs. This need to de-emphasize gender is imperative to applying this story to anyone, anywhere. Therefore, the casting would be as follows:
Roy M. Cohn, Prior 2: Male
Joseph Porter Pitt, Prior 1, Eskimo: Male
Harper Amaty Pitt, Martin Heller: Female
Louis Ironson: Male
Prior Walter, Man in Park: Male
Hannah Porter Pitt, Rabbi Isisor Chemelwitz, Henry, Ethel Rosenberg: Female
Belize, Mr. Lies: Male
The Angel, The Voice, Emily, Sister Ella Chapter, the Woman in the South Bronx: Female
Even if given the opportunity to cast many actors from a company, I would decline because of the original intent of Tony Kushner. He specifically asks for a “paired down style of presentation…employing the cast as well as the stagehands- which makes for an actor-driven event, as this must be.” Too many actors would, I believe, distract from the centralized and focused story with its intricate webbing of the lives of the aforementioned characters.
While Mr. Kushner is specific about his needs for gender casting and the doubling of roles, his requirements for ethnicity are almost non-existent. For the actors portraying Roy M. Cohn and Ethel Rosenberg and their subsequent other roles, the look of would need to slightly allude to their historical counterparts. In other words, both would need to be Caucasian with a nod toward their Jewish heritage. I envision Harper and her mother to be Caucasian with a plain aspect in their features as they also need to cross-dress to portray other genders. I believe Joseph looks like a clean-cut, white male to exude his “Regan-ite” demeanor with Louise being portrayed by black man of a slim, but muscular stature. Prior should be more feminine and slight in his body type but ethnicity does not need to be pronounced. Finally, I see the man playing Belize to be of Hispanic descent and should also be thin, attractive and effeminate.
Because of the continuously evolving scenery and safety concerns with the moments of magic in the show, all actors would need to embody a healthy and non-impaired state. This is, unfortunately, not a show that would allow for any physical or mental handicaps with any potential actors. The faculties of sight, hearing, movement as well as speech is imperative for the proper telling of this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment