Angels In America

The titles in the boxed set are Angels in America: Millenium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes includes Part One, Millennium Approaches and Part Two, Perestroika “Glorious. A monumental, subversive, altogether remarkable masterwork…Details of specific catastrophes may have changed since this Reagan-era AIDS epic won the Pulitzer and the Tony, but the real cosmic and human obsessions—power, religion, sex, responsibility, the future of the world—are as perilous, yet as falling-down funny, as ever.” –Linda Winer, Newsday "A vast, miraculous play... provocative, witty and deeply upsetting... a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama." - Frank Rich, New York Times "A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty." - John Lahr, New Yorker “An enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theater stretched to its full potential can achieve.” -Philadelphia Inquirer "Angels in America is the finest drama of our time, speaking to us of an entire era of life and death as no other play within memory. It ranks as nothing less than one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century." - John Heilpern, New York Observer “Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both.” -New York Times This new edition of Tony Kushner's masterpiece is published with the author's recent changes and a new introduction in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its original production. One of the most honored American plays in history, Angels in America was awarded two Tony Awards for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was made into an Emmy Award-winning HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. This two-part epic, subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," has received hundreds of performances worldwide in more than twenty-six languages. Tony Kushner’s plays include Angels in America; Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Cornelle; Slavs!; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.

Dramatizes the effects of AIDS on the United States through the experiences of lawyer Roy Cohn, a Morman couple, and a young man called Prior Walter

Angels in America paved a new way for American theatre in its combination of heightened theatricality and politics. Tony Kushner has emerged as one of the American theatre's leading playwrights and productions worldwide have meant that the play has been recognized as the most important American play in decades. With the scope of the characters' sexual, class and religious affiliations in the play, Angels in America offers a unique possibility to discuss the construction of American identity in the late 1980s and 1990s. This guide provides a comprehensive critical introduction to the play, giving students an overview of the background and context; detailed analysis of the play including its structure, style and characters; analysis of key production issues and choices; an overview of the performance history from the first performances of Millennium Approaches and Perestroika to recent productions and the 2003 HBO adaptation; and an annotated guide to further reading highlighting key critical approaches.

Leading critics, scholars, and theater practictioners consider the most talked-about play of the 1990s

"ANGELS IN AMERICA has proved to be a watershed drama, the most lyrical and ambitious augury of an era since Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie." John Lahr, The New Yorker "The most influential American play of the last two decades." Patrick Healy, The New York Times "Daring and dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least absconding of God." Jack Kroll, Newsweek "The greatest American play of the waning years of the twentieth century." Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

"ANGELS IN AMERICA has proved to be a watershed drama, the most lyrical and ambitious augury of an era since Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie." John Lahr, The New Yorker "The most influential American play of the last two decades." Patrick Healy, The New York Times "Daring and dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least absconding of God." Jack Kroll, Newsweek "The greatest American play of the waning years of the twentieth century." Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Würzburg (Philosophische Fakultät I), course: Race, Gender and Identity in Postmodern American Theater, language: English, abstract: How are Kushner ́s characters in "Angels in America" dealing with the new challenges in the changing postmodern world of the 1980s? Which position does the play take towards the ambivalence of progress? These questions are now to be analysed in the following term paper. Therefore the two positions contra and pro progress are closely examined and carefully weighed up against each other. Not to go beyond the scope of this term paper, only the main points of the notion of progress in "Angels in America" are worked out and exemplary substantiated. "[Y]our ambivalent about everything", Belize characterizes Louis suitably in one of their discussions about politics and society. As this quotation is linked to one character of Tony Kushner ́s "Angels in America", which consists of the two books called "Millenium Approaches" and "Perestroika", one could surely transfer this statement to the whole play. Ambivalence plays a main role within the drama and consequently throws up many significant questions. One of them deals with the notion of progress. Kushner takes up the theme of progress and throws light on its ambivalent character. Progress, especially in today ́s postmodern era, can be connected to something positive, considering the amount of knowledge and new technologies, which make life easier. Moreover personal progress implies strive for improvement, which is inherent in every human being. Nevertheless a progressing world is a world in which things are getting faster and often uncontrollable. Traditions and old values die, while individualisation and isolation grow, which leads to the rise of uncertainty.

A Study Guide for Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: The American Rhetorical Tradition, language: English, abstract: While this extensive film encompasses a variety of themes and topics, the focus of this paper will be its proposition of progress. It will be argued that Angels in America confirms progress to be inevitable and essential by drawing on, and redefining, American concepts and myths of westward movement and migration, equality and pluralism. Thus, traditional elements of the construct “American Dream” will be analyzed. The first part will consist of a short overview of different approaches to progress employed in the film: historical, religious and political. Subsequently, the second and third part will focus on a set of selected scenes and investigate how progress, and the lack thereof, is communicated in the depiction of different characters as they are caught in a constant struggle between motion and staying put, between moving on and giving up, between living and death. From this, the redefinition of aforementioned American concepts will be derived. In 2003, playwright Tony Kushner adopted his two-part play premiered in 1991 and 1992, Angels in America, to the screen. The HBO miniseries was directed by Mike Nichols and studded with celebrated actors such as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Set in New York City in the mid 1980s, a time of Reagan’s politics and the silencing of AIDS, the series revolves around a set of characters differing greatly in ethnicity, religion, worldview and sexual orientation. They include Louis and Prior, a homosexual couple having to cope with Prior’s AIDS diagnosis, and Harper and Joe, Mormons, who are faced with Joe’s oppressed homosexuality destroying their marriage. Other characters are Hannah, Joe’s mother from Salt Lake City, Roy Cohn, a lawyer also diagnosed with AIDS, and Belize, Prior’s black homosexual friend who is also Roy’s nurse. Throughout the film, these characters come together in unexpected ways in an attempt to move out of their crises and transform themselves.

Provides an examination of the use of human sexuality in classic literary works.

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