When “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” opened on Broadway in November 1993, the theatrical stage was transformed.
The entire production ran seven hours in two installments; it featured graphic language, full frontal nudity and explicit sexual encounters amid themes of AIDS, family, betrayal, politics, religion and gender identity.
And an angel crashed through the roof of a bedroom.
Its author, Tony Kushner, is openly gay, Jewish and a socialist. He received a Pulitzer Prize and two consecutive Tony Awards for Best Play, one for each part of “Angels in America,” a first for any playwright. Kushner has gone on to write other works; the most recent, “A Dybbuk,” opened at the Public Theater in New York on Nov. 13, but it is “Angels in America” that immediately comes to mind — and remains there.
In a first-time collaboration between two major theater companies, “Angels in America” recently descended upon Milwaukee stages. The first part, “Millennium Approaches,” was staged by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater; the second half, “Perestroika,” at the Milwaukee Chamber Theater.
Speaking by phone from a writers colony in Vermont, Tony Kushner recently shared his thoughts on “Angels” in the Clinton era, Newt Gingrich, socialism, the gay and lesbian communities, and how his “Angels” has changed his life some four years later — as the millennium more closely approaches.
Q–Since you first wrote “Angels” and had it produced, how have the play’s meanings changed?
A–I think, sure, they’ve changed with the changes in history. There was a dramatic point in the first full production done at the Mark Taper Forum (in Los Angeles) when . . . Clinton had won his first election, in ’92. And it was great. The whole thing turned into a big party celebrating the end of the Reagan era. That didn’t last very long. Now there’s profound disillusionment with Clinton.
And I think that what’s true of the play now is that . . . the problems of the Reagan era, the politics and the selfishness that it’s addressing, are very much in force these days and doing a great deal of mischief.
I think there’s some optimistic signs recently of a transformation of that. The final test of the play on one level will be to see how it fares through changing political fortunes.
Q–How are we faring today as a society amid changing political fortunes?
A — I’m disappointed with how stupid people have been about the Gingrich gang and the ultimate ramifications of the Reagan ego-anarchist assault on government. I think it’s taken people a long time; it really finally took the Oklahoma City bombing to make people realize that really what these people are about is a form of barbarism. These guys and Timothy McVeigh (who was convicted in the Oklahoma City attack) are not as far apart on the political spectrum as they really ought to be. The flirtation of the radical wing, the most deeply reactionary wing of the Republican Right, with the militia groups, the lunatic fringes of the right has been appalling.
Q–What optimistic signs do you see?
A–I think the optimism is that, after this kind of wakeup call, and after the recent wave of burnings of black churches, and after the violence in Oklahoma City, the country, which I’ve always really believed is about 40 to 50 percent reasonably progressive and sane, that these people who voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 kind of came out of their torpor.
I think the country’s woken up again.
I’ve noticed among my students when I teach that, because the economy’s doing well, kids are a little less terrified that they’re not going to have jobs and, consequently, they’re beginning to think that they’re going to have the kind of luxury and civilized comfort that any society should provide its children. That enables them to start to have dreams and Utopian notions and principles that will, if it continues long enough, will lead to student movements, which will always help push a civilization forward.
I’m optimistic, to an extent, that that will happen.
Q–Hope and faith are recurrent themes throughout “Angels.” As individuals, do we find salvation through hope and faith?
A–I’ve become a Calvinist, and I don’t believe that salvation is something that anybody can assume they have, or know that they have. Whether or not salvation comes from God, or whether or not salvation rests in a future in which the human race continues and doesn’t destroy itself is up to the individual to decide. Every great theological thinker from Augustine up through Calvin and beyond has pointed that out, and a lot of the great Jewish thinkers as well.
You can’t really know whether you’re saved, so you have to proceed with a certain kind of optimism that is hard to make. The challenge of faith is that you don’t know. That cloud of uncertainty that surrounds all belief in the future, whether it’s in the future after death or in the future, historically speaking, materially speaking. All faith is a leap into the unknown and a refusal to succumb to the despair that always accompanies uncertainty.
Q–Labels are used throughout the play–labels of sexual orientation, religion, politics. How have labels changed since writing “Angels”?
A–Label is a term that I don’t particularly like. It’s like a flat sticker that you stick on something. It suggests two-dimensionality and is put on and pulled off very easily. What we’re talking about is an identity that acts upon an indeterminate rootedess in a human being’s personality.
Nobody knows whether being gay or lesbian is inherited or conditioned, but we do know that one’s sexuality is (a) not really labelable, it’s always very complicated, and (b) to the extent that you can make yourself an identity and name out of it by calling yourself gay you are referring to some very deep part of yourself.
If you call yourself a communist, you’re talking more to an extent of a determined choice.
I call myself a socialist, which is a strategic choice. In some ways I am a socialist and in some ways I’m not entirely sure about some of the things of the socialist movement. I’m a theoretical socialist at the moment because I don’t know how we get to socialism. I only know it seems to me like an infinitely better tradition and alternative than the traditions of the free market and capitalism.
Q–What about the identity politics of the gay and lesbian communities?
A–There’s tremendous amounts of agonizing and self-examination going on about everything, ranging from safe sex to what is gay culture, what is lesbian culture. Everybody’s attacking everyone else now, which is exactly what you would expect us to be.
There’s always the initial purity of everyone banding together somewhat artificially. It’s only a purity in memory. It wasn’t pure at the moment. But then, eventually, you have real gains. And every one of these movements had had tremendous successes.
The lesbian and gay movement has made immense strides forward in 25 years as have the African-American civil rights movements in 50, 60, 150 years. And women have made huge gains. We’ve made great progress. With progress comes assimilation and appropriation and all sorts of complications as well.
Q–Are the gay and lesbian communities more unified today?
A–We’re going through a lot of struggles and pains. The one thing I feel fairly confident about is that “Angels” is not a play that peddles a very simplistic American politics, so consequently I don’t know how it will fare in the long-term in its analysis of American politics. I hope it has enough depth to make it last.
I think it’s certainly the case that a number of different kinds of gay men are presented in “Angels” and the community is not presented as a simple, single entity. The stress lines are there between conservatism and progressive, and black and white and Jewish and rich and poor, and so on. I think that’s powerful enough.
It’s a portrait of our community that seems to me to still be of its time.
Q–What are you working on right now?
A–I’m working on a few opera librettos and a few movies and a new play that will open at the National Theatre in London in co-production with the New York Shakespeare Festival. It’s about the relationship between American slavery and the British textile industry in the 19th Century.
It’s called “Henry Box Brown” or “The Mirror of Slavery.” He was a slave in Richmond, Va., who mailed himself out of slavery in a box. And then went to England with a traveling show about the history of slavery. And I’ve been doing research on it for about eight years now. It’s going to be a very, very big play. (Laughs.) I’m having a lot of fun with it.
Q–How have you changed as a playwright and as a human being since writing “Angels”?
A–Only in bad ways. (Laughs)
Q–Can you talk about them?
A–It’s been a hard time. And it’s been a wonderful time. A lot of fun becoming somewhat known. The money has been nice, and the freedom from real financial worry is nice. And a sense of accomplishment is really nice.
I like going around the country and giving lectures and interviews and having nice people listen to my rather mundane opinion.
The downside of that is that I’ve lost a certain amount of privacy and time to myself. I’m a person who writes with a lot of difficulty. I’m very undisciplined and afraid of writing. I’ve always needed an obscene amount of time and quiet to do it. And finding that has been very difficult.
I’m only now beginning to realize five years after the biggest explosion of this thing (“Angels”) how tough these last few years have been in that regard. How far away from myself, in some ways, I’ve drifted.
But I hope I’ve kept a reasonably level head. And I haven’t bought six purple Cadillacs with whitewall tires.
