Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America

by Deborah R. Geis (Editor), Deborah R. Geis

Tony Kushner's complex and demanding play Angels in A Gay Fantasia on National Themes has been the most talked about, analyzed, and celebrated play of the decade. The critic Harold Bloom has included Kushner's play in his "Western canon" alongside Shakespeare and the Bible, and drama scholar John M. Clum has termed it "a turning point in the history of gay drama, the history of American drama, and of American literary culture." While we might be somewhat wary of the instant canonization that such critical assessments confer, clearly Kushner's play is an important work, honored by the Pulitzer Prize, thought worthy of recognition on "purely aesthetic" grounds at the same time that it has been embraced--and occasionally rejected--for its politics.
Kushner's play explicitly positions itself in the current American conflict over identity politics, yet also situates that debate in a broader historical the American history of McCarthyism, of immigration and the "melting pot," of westward expansion, and of racist exploitation. Furthermore, the play enters into the politically volatile struggles of the AIDS crisis, struggles themselves interconnected with the politics of sexuality, gender, race, and class.
The original essays in Approaching the Millennium explore the complexities of the play and situate it in its particular, conflicted historical moment. The contributors help us understand and appreciate the play as a literary work, as theatrical text, as popular cultural phenomenon, and as political reflection and intervention. Specific topics include how the play thematizes gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity; the postmodern incarnation of the Brechtian epic; AIDS and the landscape of American politics. The range of different international productions of Angels in America provides a rich basis for discussion of its production history, including the linguistic and cultural shifts required in its "translation" from one stage to the next.
The last section of Approaching the Millennium includes interviews with Tony Kushner and other key creators and players involved in the original productions of Angels . The interviews explore issues raised earlier in the volume and dialogues between the creative artists who have shaped the play and the critics and "theatricians" engaged in responding to it.
Contributors to this volume are Arnold Aronson, Art Borreca, Gregory W. Bredbeck, Michael Cadden, Nicholas de Jongh, Allen J. Frantzen, Stanton B. Garner, Deborah R. Geis, Martin Harries, Steven F. Kruger, James Miller, Framji Minwalla, Donald Pease, Janelle Reinelt, David Román, David Savran, Ron Scapp, and Alisa Solomon.
Deborah Geis is Associate Professor of English, Queens College, City University of New York. Steven F. Kruger is Professor and Chair of the Department of English, Queens College, City University of New York.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Theatre

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

Reviews

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genuinely, the rating is on me. I was not prepared for the heaviness of these essays. If I were preparing for a paper, this would be a godsend. To read for enjoyment, this was a trial. I read it over a few weeks and mostly moved to skim reading with the last couple. While I did not get as much as I hoped out of it, the essays do cover an array of topics relating to the play, and I admire their diversity. Some of the topics include identity, identity conversion, reception, set design, and angel movement.

Definitely this is a great collection of academic work, but after a while of reading the essays back to back and analyzing the same moments, I got pretty tired of putting in the effort.

[John Medlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a fan of Angels in America, this collection of essays should be on your radar. While not every essay was useful to me, each one was on fascinating facets of one of the most important Queer shows in theatrical history. The essays do a wonderful job of framing the play and explaining some of the more complex aspects of it. I particularly loved "November 1, 1992: AIDS/Angels in America" by David Roman. It was fascinating seeing the perspective seeing the first staging of the second half of Angels. The discussion that followed was incredibly useful in my postgraduate studies.

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Endlessly fascinating, particularly the essays entitled "Ambivalence, Utopia and a Queer Sort of Materialism," "The Vehicle of Democracy," and "Identity and Conversion."

A major source for this essay I wrote: https://harryrmcdonald.wordpress.com/...