by Tony Kushner
HANNAH PITT
Cristine McMurdo-Wallis
THE ANGEL
Lise Bruneau
The American national touring company of Angels began performances at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, in September 1994. It was directed by Michael Mayer. Sets were designed by David Gallo, costumes by Michael Krass, lights by Brian MacDevitt, and music by Michael Philip Ward. The cast was as follows:
ROY COHN
Jonathan Hadary
JOE PITT
Philip Earl Johnson
HARPER PITT
Kate Goehring
BELIZE
Reg Flowers
LOUIS IRONSON
Peter Birkenhead
PRIOR WALTER
Robert Sella
HANNAH PITT
Barbara Robertson
THE ANGEL
Carolyn Swift
I continued my work on Angels during the rehearsals and previews of the productions mentioned above, sometimes making major changes, sometimes tweaking only a line or two. Most of the work was focused on the structure of Perestroika. After the national tour was launched, I decided to stop, at least for a time.
An English touring production of Angels, mounted by Headlong, premiered in Glasgow on April 20, 2007, arriving at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London, on June 20, 2007. It was directed by Daniel Kramer. The sets were designed by Soutra Gilmour, costumes by Mark Bouman, lights by Charles Balfour, and sound by Carolyn Downing. The cast was as follows:
ROY COHN
Greg Hicks
JOE PITT
Jo Stone-Fewings
HARPER PITT
Kirsty Bushell
BELIZE
Obi Abili
LOUIS IRONSON
Adam Levy
PRIOR WALTER
Mark Emerson
HANNAH PITT
Ann Mitchell
THE ANGEL
Golda Rosheuvel
A new Dutch production of Angels, by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, with a translation by Carel Alphenaar, opened on March 5, 2008, at the Stadsschouwburg. It was directed by Ivo van Hove. The Toneelgroep’s dramaturg for the production was Peter van Kraaij. The sets were designed by Jan Versweyveld, video by Tal Yarden, costumes by Wojciech Dziedzic, and music by Wim Selles. The cast was as follows:
ROY COHN
Hans Kesting
JOE PITT
Barry Atsma
HARPER PITT
Hadewych Minis
BELIZE
Roeland Fernhout
LOUIS IRONSON
Fedja van Huêt
PRIOR WALTER
Eelco Smits
HANNAH PITT
Marieke Heebink
THE ANGEL
Alwin Pulinckx
Perestroika was presented at the Paul Walker (of blessed memory!) Theatre by the second-year students of the Graduate Acting Program of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, on October 30, 2009. It was directed by Janet Zarish. The sets were designed by James Bolenbaugh, costumes by Maria Hooper, and lighting by Jimmy Lawlor. The cast was as follows:
HENRY, LOUIS IRONSON, ASIATICA, PRELAPSARIANOV
Matt Citron
PRIOR WALTER
Alex Hurt
THE ANGEL, ETHEL ROSENBERG, EMILY, EUROPA
Megan Ketch
MR. LIES, ROY COHN
Derek Wilson
HARPER PITT, HANNAH PITT, OCEANIA
Clea Alsip
JOE PITT
Ansel Davis Brasseur
HANNAH PITT, THE MORMON MOTHER, HARPER PITT
Lesley Shires
ROY COHN, BELIZE, AFRICANII
Korey Jackson
BELIZE, THE ANGEL
Carra Patterson
LOUIS IRONSON, AUSTRALIA
Todd C. Bartels
PRIOR WALTER
Ben Cole
And finally (or at least for the time being):
Angels in America opened in New York City, on October 27, 2010, as the first production of the 2010–2011 Signature Theatre Company season. It was directed by Michael Greif. The sets were designed by Mark Wendland, costumes by Clint Ramos, additional costumes by Jeff Mahshie, lights by Ben Stanton, music by Michael Friedman and Chris Miller, and projections by Wendall K. Harrington. The cast was as follows:
ROY COHN
Frank Wood
JOE PITT
Bill Heck
HARPER PITT
Zoe Kazan
BELIZE
Billy Porter
LOUIS IRONSON
Zachary Quinto
PRIOR WALTER
Christian Borle
HANNAH PITT
Robin Bartlett
THE ANGEL
Robin Weigert
A Few Notes from the Playwright About Staging
In General
Millennium Approaches and Perestroika are two parts of a single play, but at the same time they’re two rather different plays, each with its own structure and character. Millennium has three acts and Perestroika has five. Three acts make a tauter, cleaner play, the gestures and rhythms of which will feel more inexorable, more destination-driven; a five-act play is likely to provide a more expansive, exploratory and ultimately open-ended and unresolved experience. Perhaps it can be said that Millennium is a play about security and certainty being blown apart, while Perestroika is about danger and possibility following the explosion. The events in Perestroika proceed from the wreckage made by the Angel’s traumatic entry at the end of Millennium. A membrane has broken; there is disarray and debris. All of which is to suggest that, especially when the two parts of Angels are produced in repertory, the differences should be visible and palpable onstage.
The plays benefit from a pared-down style of presentation, with scenery kept to an evocative and informative minimum. There are a lot of scenes and a lot of locations; an informative minimum means providing what’s needed to enable the audience to know, as quickly as possible, where a scene is set. Actors need to help by playing the reality of these locations: How loud can you get, really, in a fancy restaurant?
I recommend rapid scene shifts (no blackouts!), employing the cast as well as stagehands in shifting the scene. This must be an actor-driven event.
Intermissions
Audiences are said to have grown increasingly impatient and unwilling to sit through long evenings in the theater. The people of whom this is true will likely seek out shorter plays than Angels in America. I believe that, once engaged, audiences rediscover the rewards of patience and effort and the pleasures of an epic journey. An epic play should be a little fatiguing; a rich, heady, hard-earned fatigue is among a long journey’s pleasures and rewards.
That said, the audience has to be given chances along the way to gather its strength and attention. Millennium Approaches is a long play, and Perestroika is longer. Each play is meant to have two intermissions, after Act One and Act Two of Millennium, and after Act Three and Act Four of Perestroika. These segments are shaped to function as coherent single events as well as successions of scenes.
The temptation to take only one intermission in each of the two parts should, in my opinion, be resisted. Although one intermission shortens the running time, the demands it puts on the audience’s attention and the pressures it puts on the scenes immediately before the single intermission or near the end of the play are unnecessary, detrimental and counterproductive—the running time may be shorter, but it will feel much longer.
Magic
The moments of magic, such as the appearance and disappearance of Mr. Lies, the ghosts, Prior’s fiery Book hallucination and the Angel’s arrival, ought to be fully imagined and realized, as wonderful theatrical illusions—which means it’s OK if the wires show, and maybe it’s good that they do, but the magic should at the same time be thoroughly thrilling, fantastical, amazing.
It’s easy to stage a person’s (or a ghost’s) magical disappearance by simply having the actor exit into the wings, but I don’t think that’
s a strong choice. Not only is it not thoroughly thrilling, fantastical, amazing or fun to watch a person walk offstage, it’s also pedestrian, literally and figuratively. Walking offstage is slow, and therefore it lacks one very important aspect of vanishing—namely that it’s abrupt. In a world in which young people by their thousands sicken and, with obscene speed, die (in other words, the world of this play), vanishing abruptly is particularly upsetting, even frightening. The magic ought to be fun for the audience, but also disturbing. For Prior, it’s increasingly terrifying.
There’s more magic in Perestroika, and as the play progresses, the magic gets grander. It’s hard to make this happen: long, two-part plays are enormously demanding of resources, time and energy, and there’s always the risk that invention, attention to detail, time and cash will run out just when they’re needed most, in the play’s home stretch. Perestroika’s fifth-act Heaven scenes should, whether or not the stage directions are followed, at the very least resemble nothing on Earth; the Hall of the Continental Principalities in Act Five, Scene 5, ought to be the high point of the stage magic of Angels.
Split Scenes
In the split scenes, two separate events occur more or less simultaneously in different locations—for example, Act One, Scene 8, of Millennium Approaches, in which we observe Harper and Joe in their living room in Brooklyn and Louis and Prior in their Alphabetland bedroom. Both events are intended to continue, active and alive, throughout the entire split scene, with focus going where the story needs it to go. Stopping one of the two events in its tracks by artificially freezing it is an easy but again, in my opinion, not a strong choice. The trick is to work out psychologically coherent (hence playable), compellingly dramatic reasons why the characters in one event become still and quiet when the action that the audience should be attending to shifts to the other event and onto other characters.
When a character chooses to stop talking, to be still and quiet, for reasons having to do with the conflict he or she is in during a scene, an active choice is being made, and hence the character stays alive onstage—as opposed to being put in suspended animation by the director. Finding concurrent, complementary vitality in the two events of a split scene gives them their particular dynamism; they’ll be much more fun to play, and to watch.
Language
The engine of the play is the struggle in which the characters engage to change unendurable circumstances—all the characters, all the time we’re watching them. The circumstances the characters face, the world they inhabit, and the characters themselves are in a very important sense made up of words.
Words are important, and they’re specific. We speak to produce effects, to catalyze, to engender consequences. We choose words strategically, precisely, whether or not we do so consciously.
If the character you’re playing says something that strikes you, the actor, as odd, large, artificial, you should assume it strikes your character that way as well. If a character opposite yours says something that sounds ornate, awkward, a non-sequitur to you, the actor, it probably sounds that way to your character too.
I advise taking very seriously and working hard to answer the question that you, the actor, and probably also the character you’re playing, are longing to ask: Why am I/Why is this other person talking this way? That question is important. When the language in the play is strange, in other words, its strangeness is always an action. A sentence is no less an action than a blow with a broadsword or a passionate kiss. And the degree and kind of strangeness matter enormously.
The characters in the play are fighting for survival; the stakes are very high. They talk to make things happen, to advance an agenda, to defend, to enlist, to seduce, to punish. Sometimes they speak in an effort to understand how or what they’re feeling. But never speak solely to announce your character’s distress, hoping for pity. The characters in the play are tougher than that; the world of the play, like the world outside the theater, is a tough place.
Two Notes Regarding Pronunciation
On page 156, Roy’s coinage, “azido-methatalo-molamoca-whatchamacallit” is pronounced “aZIDOmuhTHATUHLO-moluhmocuh-whatchamacallit.” The “I” in “ZIDO” is short, as in “in,” and the “TH” in “THATUHLO” is soft, as in “THistle.”
On page 224, Prior is using the verb “prophesy,” which is pronounced “proph-uh-sigh,” not the noun “prophecy” which is pronounced “proph-uh-see.”
Nine Notes Regarding the Angel
The Angel, who is related to humans but isn’t human, is arguably the most challenging character in Angels, and Act Two of Perestroika is inarguably the most challenging sequence. After two decades of struggling with her and watching others struggle, I’m offering these thoughts, which I hope will be helpful.
1) Metaphysics: I’ll begin by repeating: The Angel is related to humans but isn’t human. That’s the primary challenge in acting, directing and designing her. For starters, she refers to herself in the plural (I I I I) because she isn’t a single thing: She is a Principality, which is, depending on which angelological ordering system you subscribe to, the highest or one of the highest types among the angelic orders. She is four Divine Emanations—Lumen (blue), Candle (gold), Phosphor (green) and Fluor (purple)—manifest as an aggregate entity, the Continental Principality of America. I have no advice about how to play four nonhuman beings amalgamated into one nonhuman being. I only know that while she should be comprehensible to the audience, she should also be terribly unfamiliar.
2) Appearance: She should be extraordinary to behold, and her wings are of paramount importance—they should move and they should move us. She shouldn’t look like Botticelli painted her, or any other Italian Renaissance painter, or any European of any period, or like a traditional Christmas tree ornament. She should look breathtaking, severe, scary, powerful, and magnificently American.
3) Her Cough: The Angel’s cough is a manifestation of cosmic unwellness, but she controls it, and she is a creature of unimaginable strength and discipline. She doesn’t want Prior to sense any weakness, disorder or confusion on her part, and her cough ought to be a single, dry bark, not prolonged wracking emphysemic spasms. Ellen McLaughlin, who created the role, based her brusque, even angry rap of a cough on a cat hacking up a furball. It was startling, sharp, simple—one hack, not ten—and effectively nonhuman, not funny as much as disconcerting and ominous, and always always dignified. It did not make her seem frail.
4) She’s Not Joking, and She’s No Joke: Some of what happens between Prior and the Angel is supposed to be funny, but it’s essential for the play, and, for that matter, for the comedy, that the Angel’s dignity and her unequivocally serious purpose are never—as in not for one single second!—compromised by schticky winking at the audience. Prior’s terror at being in her presence and/or at the possibility that he’s going mad never (as in not for one single second) abandons him. As Prior has his first full encounter with the Angel, and simultaneously relates it to Belize three weeks later, we’re watching a cosmically high-stakes encounter between a badly frightened but very brave human being and his furious, grief-stricken, frightened and frighteningly powerful nonhuman visitor/intruder. Apologies if I’m sounding strident, but I’ve learned that there are dire consequences if this reality is parodied or traduced. People can enjoy pratfalls, mugging and easy laughs, even while determining that they won’t be fooled again into deep investment in what’s proved to be unserious. Once faith in the seriousness of what’s onstage has been withdrawn, however briefly, it’s unlikely to return fully.
5) Her Arrival: If at all technically feasible, the Angel should arrive in Prior’s bedroom by crashing through the ceiling. This is harder than bringing her through a crack in the rear wall, which is what’s usually done. But she’s coming down from Heaven, not from across town; it’s a drop-down-on-your-head explosive revelation, rather than the sneaky, sideways kind. If at all possible, she should arrive in dust and noise as the ceiling rains down on Prior’s head. I didn’t know, when
I wrote the play, that so few theaters have fly space.
6) Flying Versus Rehearsing: I also didn’t know how difficult stage flying would prove to be. Originally I imagined that the Angel would fly during Act Two of Perestroika, doing spectacular aerial stunts as she spoke. I’ve seen many productions of Perestroika, and I’ve never seen this happen. What I’ve seen instead is many valuable hours of rehearsal and tech time lost, and much money spent hiring stage-flying specialists, trying to make this happen.
I’ve come to the conviction that attempting extensive flying is not only unwise, because it lies beyond the technical and temporal means of most theaters, it’s a distraction from the real business at hand. The Anti-Migratory Epistle sequence in Act Two won’t be solved by Angelic midair somersaults—which, trust me, will never materialize. The effectiveness of this long and difficult scene depends entirely on getting its complex realities clear, specific and playable, and that means time-consuming, painstaking, actor-director rehearsal-room work, for which there is no substitute.
7) Unhooking the Angel: There should be flying, of course: The Angel should fly in, and fly out, carrying the Epistle. In between her entrance and her exit, she has to be able to move around the stage, so that she can interact fully with Prior and, when appropriate, with Belize. This most likely means that she will have to be unhooked from her flying rig onstage while the scene is in progress, and then hooked back up. Stagehands, visible to the audience, can do this. Her fly-wires show, so why not visible stagehands? Stagehands ought to help Prior out of his prophet garb and into his pajamas in the transition from the street to his bedroom and back again.