Show and Tell #2!: "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches"

My favorite play, Angels in America, is a two part “gay fantasia on national themes” by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning playwright Tony Kushner. However, for this show and tell post, I will only concentrate on the first part of the play titled Millennium Approaches. First written and workshopped in 1990, Millennium Approaches had productions in London (1992) and Los Angeles (1992) before being performed on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993. This production earned Kushner his Pulitzer Prize for Drama and first Tony Award for Best Play. Both parts of Angels in America were adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2003 directed by Mike Nichols. This information was garnered from the production notes at the beginning of my copy of the script. This play can be purchased online on sites such as www.amazon.com or in most major bookstores.

Millennium Approaches tells the story of seven individuals living in New York City from October 1985 to January 1986 during the height of the AIDS crisis and in the middle of Reagan’s tumultuous tenure as President. Early in the play, Prior Walter, a gay designer, discloses to his boyfriend, Louis Ironson, that he is dying from AIDS. Louis, who is HIV negative, struggles with the prospect of losing his lover to illness and considers abandoning the relationship. Throughout the play, Prior hears the disembodied voice of an Angel. At the same time, a Mormon couple, Joe and Harper Pitt, fight over whether or not Joe should move to Washington D.C. for a better job opportunity. Harper’s addiction to Valium makes her hallucinate frequently, and Joe struggles with his own same-sex attractions. Towards the end of part one, Louis and Joe leave their respective partners and begin to find comfort in one another. The play ends with the Angel appearing to Prior in all her glory and proclaiming him to be a prophet. Other major characters include a conservative lawyer with AIDS, a former drag queen named Belize, and Joe’s doting Mormon mother who comes to live with Harper after Joe leaves her.

One interesting dramaturgical choice that Kushner makes is that, despite there being eight actors who play the eight main roles (this includes the Angel), there are twelve other supporting roles that are also played by the eight actors, creating what Kushner calls “an actor-driven event.” Kushner goes so far as to dictate which actor should play which roles, often creating some interesting dichotomies. For example the actor playing Prior also plays a man in Central Park that Louis goes to have anonymous sex with after he has left Prior’s hospital bed. However, the act is abandoned when the condom breaks and the man fears contracting HIV. Essentially, the man has Louis experience a lesser form of the rejection that Prior will feel when he realizes that Louis has left.

Another interesting and excellent dramaturgical choice Kushner makes is having two scenes play out on stage at the same time. In scene eight of act I, Joe and Harper discuss Joe’s latent homosexual feelings while Louis theorizes about justice and hypothetically asks Prior what would happen if he abandoned the relationship. The scenes play out at the same time, but the couples take turns having their own conversations. However, later in scene nine of act II, Louis tells Prior that he is giving up on their relationship at the same time Joe tells Harper that he is a gay man. Because the tension and energy is higher, the lines frequently overlap each other as each individual struggles to cope with the difficult situations that they are facing. To list another example, Harper’s hallucinations and Prior’s fever dreams brought about by his illness also occur simultaneously at one point, bring the two hurting characters into a safe, almost celestial world where they can experience the “threshold of revelation” (scene 7, act I).

Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia of national Themes. 1995. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006. Print.

Checkpoint #2 Comment Links

http://mpret7.blogspot.com/2013/03/noses-off.html?showComment=1365793095441#c3522007400837574508

http://sstev31.blogspot.com/2013/04/show-and-tell-post-2-asssassins.html?showComment=1365793498949#c5813197043299761641

http://tweber7.blogspot.com/2013/03/noises-off.html?showComment=1365793985620#c643304571923661088

http://tweber7.blogspot.com/2013/04/detroit-city.html?showComment=1365880550316#c6639339464395673789

http://comingsoontotheatrenearyou.blogspot.com/2013/04/insert-door-puns-here.html?showComment=1365881110509#c2216461163293891004

http://yvettebourgeoisthtr2130.blogspot.com/2013/03/buried-child-by-sam-shepard.html?showComment=1365883567372#c343545776915700109

Reading Response to D'Amour's "Detroit"

So… why title a play Detroit if it isn’t about Detroit, it isn’t set in Detroit, and the characters never even so much as allude to Detroit? Assuming Lisa D’Amour isn’t just trying to give readers and audiences an answerless riddle to ponder over, a good dramaturge will research the possible connection between the “Motor City” and the characters and events in D’Amour’s play. Based on my own research into the subject matter, I have reason to believe D’Amour is trying to connect the current plight of middle-class Americans, such as Ben and Mary, to the economic and social decline of Detroit, Michigan, which was once the tenth largest city in the country just thirteen years ago.

Much like the 1950’s cookie-cutter neighborhood that Ben and Mary live in, Detroit in the early 21^st century is merely a shadow of its former glory. Unemployment rates are obscenely high (around 15%) due to the closure of factories and other places of business in and around the city, forcing many residents to look for opportunities in other states. This flight from the city only compounds its dismal financial situation. According to one New York Times article, there are nearly 70,000 abandoned buildings in the city of Detroit that one resident stated leaves the children of the city psychologically traumatized (Binelli). Detroit reached its peak population in the 1950’s at about 1.8 million residents; this was right at the beginning of the city’s automobile industry renaissance (U.S. Census Bureau). However the population has been declining significantly since then. From 2000 to 2010, the city went from being the tenth largest city in the nation to just eighteenth, experiencing a drop in population of roughly 25% (Wisely).

Much like Detroit, the couples in Detroit face many of the same struggles. Ben and Kenny both struggle with unemployment and the thought of not being able to provide for their wives and be the breadwinner in the family. The house that Kenny and Sharon move into was abandoned for quite some time before they moved in, according to Ben and Mary, and it may very well continue to be left unoccupied after they leave in a hurry. Ultimately, the neighborhood that once offered the promise of a “bright” new life for families in the 1950’s can no longer live up to its name. Houses have been changed beyond recognition and neighbors refuse to get close to each other, perhaps because they fear these new people who just moved next door may only be passing through.

Binelli, Mark. “How Detroit Became the World Capital of Staring at Abandoned Old Buildings.” New York Times 9 November 2012. Web. 10 April 2013.

United States Census Bureau. U.S. Department of Commerce, 15 June 1998. Web. 11 April 2013.

<http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab18.txt.>.

Wisely, John and Todd Spangler. “Motor City population declines 25%.” USA Today  24 March 2011. Web. 11 April 2013.

Reading Response to Hudes's "Water by the Spoonful"

While many plays may have several different “worlds” or realities that exist within them, a good playwright will have these realities coexist with one another in such a way that the overall play as a whole gains a level of depth worthy of analysis. In her play Water by the Spoonful, Quiara Alegría Hudes expertly weaves a great play by creating two realities, the real world of Elliot and his family as well as the various users of Odessa’s website and the virtual world of the website itself, and having them interact with one another at key points to emphasize the complexity of certain relationships or themes.

For example, the first time these two realities mesh is when Odessa and John’s lunch meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Elliot and Yaz. When the scene begins, Odessa and John are discussing their lives and addictions as though they are still in the safe, virtual world of the website. While both individuals are incredibly friendly with one another, the conversation is almost too light for such serious subject matter. As audience members later realize, neither person is being completely honest with the other, leaving many important pieces of information left unsaid for fear of judgment. Their real world rendezvous is just as safe as a conversation on the website because Odessa and John can still hide behind the mask they want the other to see.

However, when Elliot and Yaz arrive on the scene to chastise Odessa for not contributing to her sister’s funeral costs, the real world breaks apart the illusions created in the virtual world. Odessa becomes almost hostile and shows a more severe side to her personality that audiences have not yet seen and most likely did not expect since her demeanor on the website is so calm and maternal. The dissonance that results from this clash between the two realities underscores how various characters in the play hide behind a virtual mask so as to avoid taking responsibility for past actions or mistakes. However, as Odessa finds out after this confrontation with Elliot and Yaz, sooner or later a person’s “real” self will have to face what he or she has done if any closure is to be gotten.

Reading Response to Shepard's "Buried Child"

How best to tackle the fundamental mystery of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child? For being a play filled with a good deal of realism (“slice-of-life” dialogue, realistic setting and characters, etc.), there exist certain elements within the play that don’t quite fit in with the common definition of theatrical realism. Part of this has to do with the ambiguities that lie at the center of Buried Child; they drive the action of the play but are never fully explained by the characters’ dialogue or the stage directions written by Shepard.

Each act includes the introduction of a particular mystery into Dodge’s farmhouse that leads to confusion and, as a result, intense conflict between the members of the family. In the first act, Tilden brings in a huge armful of corn from the fields behind the house and deposits them all over Dodge. Naturally, the patriarch of the family is confused by this because no crops have grown or been planted since the 1930’s, leading Dodge to wonder if Tilden has stolen the corn. A similar event happens in act II when Tilden brings in a large number of carrots and has Shelly skin them, presumably so they can be eaten later. When Bradley enters the house later in the act, he is outraged to find an intruder in his home as well as the vegetables that Tilden has brought into the house.

However, the mystery at the center of Buried Child is the actual child buried in the yard behind the farmhouse that Tilden brings upstairs at the end of act III. Although its true identity is never revealed, leaving the mystery up for debate long after the curtain has fallen, Dodge drops hints that the child was the result of an incestuous union between Tilden and Halie. Even more mysterious than the child’s identity is the circumstances of its death. Did Dodge actually drown his son's own flesh and blood? Or is there another truth that refuses to reveal itself?

Despite being mostly realistic, the ambiguity that pervades Shepard’s Buried Child gives the play an almost dreamlike or surreal atmosphere that refuses to be ignored.

Reading Response to Frayn's "Noises Off"

There are a number of motifs that are common in nearly every farce that has been written since the form was first created. These include motifs of miscommunication, mistaken identity, and misplaced items of importance, just to name a few. And while Michael Frayn’s brilliant comedy Noises Off has all of these motifs, there is another one that is a bit more specific to this script. Frayn includes the motif of the “real” world intruding into the world of the play within a play as a way of adding a level of complexity that many farces tend to lack. For example, Selsdon’s senility and poor drinking habits affect his performance in Nothing On just as the quarrel between the feuding lovers, Dotty and Garry, must be prevented from manifesting itself onstage in the form of Garry sabotaging Freddy’s own performance. Act II in particular shows that the dividing line between the “real” world and the world of Nothing On is tenuous at best as the actors struggle to get all of their cues right while maintaining peace between one another backstage.

An appropriate unifying principle for Noises Off would be "Curtain!" or bring the curtain down. Each act ends with Lloyd begging for Poppy to bring the curtain down on the show so that the act may end and the barrier between the two worlds of the play can be reestablished. Once the curtain is down, the actors can return to the “real” world conflicts without having to worry about whether or not the show will quite literally fall apart around them. Each act, then, is a desperate struggle to reach Selsdon’s final tagline (IF he remembers it) so that the cast can return to their own lives. In this way, Noises Off shows how a play rarely exists as its own self-contained world. The relationships between the actors and crew and their own conflicts and personal struggles often make their way onto the stage no matter how strong the wall between the real world and the world of the play may be.