Angels in America: LGBT history for today's audiences

 Angels in America: LGBT history in mainstream arts


What we consider “real” always undergoes some kind of shift when we’re at the theatre or cinema. The fact that Tony Kushner's 1991 play Angels in America relates very specifically to real life (the AIDS crisis in America, and real figures like Roy Cohn and his involvement in the Rosenberg Trials) complicates that sense of the real even further. As audiences, how do we then respond to what we’re seeing on stage or on screen? Does the fact that this is a “Fantasia on National Themes”, as the play’s subtitle tells us, mean that we find ourselves leaning into the fictionality of the play? Are we more comfortable in our seats knowing that ultimately this is fiction and can’t hurt us? 


It’s easy, I think, for Angels to give us the impression that we have a way out, that we can just let the escapist experience of film and theatre wash over us. I don’t necessarily believe that’s how we ought to approach Angels. There’s no denying the play - however fantastical and unrealistic it might be at moments - emerged from a real, tangible human crisis. As we come to the end of LGBT History Month, I hope this post can serve as a reminder that AIDS was, and is, real. And, leading on from that, the loss of life to AIDS was, and is, real. Prior Walter is a person with AIDS but though he may be fictional, the other countless people with AIDS were, and are, real. Angels in America may be a mainstream HBO minseries with an A-list cast and a huge budget, designed for popular consumption, but that doesn’t mean we can somehow become immune or blind to the importance of AIDS representation within Angels. Granted, it’s not an unflawed presentation of AIDS and the body with AIDS, but it’s an example which is available to a wide audience, which means it could open up so many avenues of thought and conversation - about AIDS, and other topics we see explored in Angels (religion, sexuality, gender, marriage, you name it).



The “Fantasia” element of Angels in America really lends itself to stage magic and the strange non-reality we find ourselves facing when we watch a theatre production. Film has the luxury of special effects, but in some ways no amount of digital rendering can match the spectacle of theatre magic. Actually seeing things happen before our very eyes, watching set pieces move, emanate sound, catch on fire, reorient themselves on the stage, reminds us simultaneously to be aware of the very real physical space we occupy in the auditorium, and the fact that the effects we see before us have a tangible, mechanical realness to them. Film effects are perhaps too abstract in comparison for us to be able to rationalise them in quite the same way. Actors in this play also are very active in the way they occupy multiple different roles throughout the story. We become familiar with the faces and bodies of the actors, even as they change their costumes, and part of that recognition makes us think about the other possible connections between characters. How is Prior’s nurse connected to the Angel? How are Joe’s mother and Ethel Rosenberg alike or unalike? Even if you’re unfamiliar with Angels in America, the question still stands: we, as human beings, occupy lots of different roles in our everyday lives; how do we manage those different parts of ourselves, and how do we respond to others doing the same? 




Now, what’s all this got to do with LGBT history? The 2003 HBO miniseries and the 2017 National Theatre production were major releases for their time, with star-studded casts and (particularly in the case of the HBO series) big budgets. LGBT stories need their storytellers, but they also need to be advertised and publicised to audiences. When you cast people like Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, and Andrew Garfield, you also invite audiences from all kinds of backgrounds and interests to the project, and in so doing you share the story with more and more people who want to - and need to - participate and listen and learn. 



I’m not saying Angels in America will give every viewer a complete LGBT history of the AIDS crisis, but I am saying that bringing stories like Angels into the mainstream is a truly effective way of allowing LGBT artists and creatives to share their experiences and their art with audiences, and give them the exposure they need to expand their work. 

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