PlayNotes - Season 50, Issue 6 - Angels in America

Discussion Series

Join us for a Book Club-style Page to Stage with the Portland Public Library. Check out your copy of the script and join us two weeks before previews of each Mainstage Production. Scripts are available at the reference desk at the Main Branch of the Portland Public Library. This year discussions will be held in the Rines Room at 5pm two weeks before a show opens. Feel free to come and chat about the plays with Literary Manager, Todd Brian Backus; his Directing and Dramaturgy Apprentices, and special guests. Visit portlandlibrary.com/programs-events/ for more information.

The Artistic Perspective, hosted by Artistic Director Anita Stewart, is an opportunity for audience members to delve deeper into the themes of the show through conversation with special guests. A different scholar, visiting artist, playwright , or other expert will join the discussion each time. The Artistic Perspective discussions are held after the first Sunday matinee performance.

Curtain Call discussions offer a rare opportunity for audience m embers to talk about the production with the performers. Through this forum, the audienc e and cast explore topics that range from the process of rehearsing and producing the tex t to character development to issues raised by the work Curtain Call discussions are held after the second Sunday matinee performance.

All discussions are free and open to the public. Show attendance is not required. To subscribe to a discussion series performance, please call th e Box Office at 207.774.0465.

HannaH Cordes, Paula Vogel, anita stewart, and todd Brian BaCkus in a talkBaCk, Portland stage ComPany

Angels in America by Tony Kushner

PlayNotes Season 50 Editorial Staff

Editor in Chief

Todd Brian Backus

Contributors

Ellis Collier, Julia Jennings, Ellery Kenyon, Alex Oleksy, Jessi Stier

Copy Editor

Adam Thibodeau

Cover Illustration

James A. Hadley

Portland Stage Company Educational Programs, like PlayNotes, are generously supported through the annual donations of hundreds of individuals and businesses, as well as special funding from:

The Simmons Foundation

Dear PlayNotes Readers,

We're so excited to have you with us for the penultimate play of our 50th season, our coproduction of Angels in America with Portland's own Dramatic Repertory Theatre!

In this issue, we explore the world of Angels in America, a play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playright Tony Kushner that sheds light on the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Following the intersecting lives of six New Yorkers in the height of the AIDS crisis, this play speaks to the suffering as well as the strenth of gay America at the end of the millenium.

Want to learn about this production of Angels in America? Head over to our "Interview with Directors: Keith Powell Beyland and Peter Brown” (pg. 10), and meet our actors in "About the Characters" (pg. 8).

Curious about the societal context for this play? Check out the article "AIDS, ACT UP, and Its Reverberations" (pg. 20) or learn about the real figure inspiring the onstage antagonist in "Bully, Coward, Victim: The Enduring Legacy of Roy Cohn" (pg. 18).

When compiling each issue of PlayNotes, we strive to provide articles and interviews that give you insight into what the process has been like behind the scenes (see articles in "Portland Stage's Angels in America"), contain pertinent information about the play’s setting and major themes (“The World of Angels in America”), and provide deeper dives into specific subjects that compelled our literary department (“Digging Deeper”). We include a list of books, plays, and other media that we hope audiences will access for more cultural content that relates to the play (“Recommended Resources”).

We are delighted to have you join us for this exciting co-production, and we hope you enjoy seeing Angels in America

Sincerely yours,

The Portland Stage Literary Department

Todd Brian Backus

Julia Jennings

Alex Oleksy

Jessi Stier

About the Play

by Alex Oleksy

Following the New York premiere of his play

A Bright Room Called Day, playwright Tony Kushner received communication from up-andcoming theater titan Oskar Eustis, requesting to do a reading of the play at Eureka Theatre in San Francisco. Afterwards, the two developed a tumultuous but fruitful creative relationship, and were eager to make their mark on the left-leaning theater scene of the West Coast. After being denied the rights to Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, Eustis encouraged Kushner to utilize a commission by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to create a work for Eureka. The playwright initially set out to write a work placing the AIDS crisis within the context of Mormonism and the American identity, with “five gay men and an angel.”

What followed became one of the defining dramas of the 20th century, but it wasn’t an easy journey. Kushner began developing the work with Eureka company members in June 1988, and the first draft landed at 120 pages without reaching the playwright’s planned conclusion. Kushner eventually decided to break the play into two parts, a radical move for the modern American theater. Angels in America: Millennium Approaches was originally presented in a workshop at the Mark Taper Forum in May 1990 before premiering at the Eureka Theatre Company in May 1991. While Part I was “easier” to wrangle, the first draft of Part II, Angels in America: Perestroika, clocked in at over 700 pages and took two days to read from start to finish. After multiple workshop productions of both Part I and II, and countless

changes in cast and creative team, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes eventually opened in repertory on Broadway in 1993, directed by George C. Wolfe. Millennium Approaches was awarded the Tony for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that season, with Perestroika also receiving the Best Play Tony the following year.

Angels in America has been produced multiple times across the globe in the 30 years since its world premiere, most recently at the National Theatre (and then on Broadway) starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane. The production was lauded as a “flat-out fabulous” revival by Ben Brantley of The New York Times, and introduced Kushner’s poetic drama to a new generation of audiences and young artists. A group of high-profile artists including playwright Jeremy O. Harris also created a digital revival of the play in 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As we near the 35th anniversary of Kushner’s masterpiece and bring Angels in America to Portland Stage, it’s clear that the impact of this fantasia cannot be overstated. In the midst of a pandemic and a wave of troubling anti-LGBTQ+ laws throughout the United States, the work’s investigation of American identity is as visceral and necessary as ever. The work is a call, as Hilton Als described in The New Yorker, for “queer men…to rise up and to take their place, not only in the Heaven that awaits them but in the Hell we’ve made through ignorance, fear, and willfulness.”

Pre-Show Questions

by Ellis Collier & Ellery Kenyon

1. What did you know about the AIDS epidemic? Read the “Act Up and its Reverberations” article on page 19 in PlayNotes. What did you learn? Did anything surprise you?

2. Read the “Art in the Plague” article on page 25. Think about the “plague” we’ve all experienced together, COVID-19. What happened to art in your communities?

3. Read the article, “Bully, Coward, Victim: The Enduring Legacy of Roy Cohn” on page 16 in PlayNotes. What do you think of the strategy that Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump? Do you see examples of this in Trump’s politics? What do you think this says about Roy Cohn?

Post-Show Questions

by Ellis Collier & Ellery Kenyon

1. Write a thesis statement that encapsulates the central themes and messages of this play. Try to make it as focused as possible. In one sentence, what is this play about?

2. In the notes of Angels in America, Tony Kushner writes that “An epic play should be a little fatiguing.” Was this play exhausting to watch? How did the length of the play influence your experience of it? Did it feel too long? Is there anything you would do to change the play’s length? If you were to make it shorter, what would you take out?

3. There are many instances of hallucinations in the play, sometimes the “hallucinations” in this play interact with the world, like Ethel Rosenberg calling the police for Roy. What does that say about reality in this play? What is the relationship between illness, hallucination, and the supernatural?

4. This was only part one! Perestroika, the second half of Angels in America, will be performed at Portland Stage next season! Did seeing this play feel like a complete experience? Did you leave the play with more answers or questions? Do you leave satisfied? Frustrated? Somewhere in between? What do you think will happen in part two?

5. This play was first performed in 1991 and is very specifically placed in 1985, covering many political and cultural issues of the time. How might the reception or interpretation of the play change over time? What do you think is different in how people respond to this play now that it is exploring these social issues in the past?

About the Characters

by Alex Oleksy

Actor: Robbie Harrison

Characters: Prior Walter/The Man in the Park

Prior Walter - Louis’ boyfriend. WASP. Occasionally works as a club designer or caterer, otherwise lives very modestly but with great style off a small trust fund.

The Man in the Park - An anonymous gay man cruising in The Ramble.

Actor: Nate Stephenson

Character: Louis Ironson

Louis Ironson - Prior’s boyfriend. Jewish. A word processor working for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Actor: Ashanti Dwight Williams

Characters: Belize/Mr. Lies

Belize - Prior’s friend. A registered nurse and former drag queen whose given name is Norman Arriaga; Belize is a drag name that stuck.

Mr. Lies - Harper’s imaginary friend, a travel agent.

Actor: Joseph Bearor

Characters: Joseph Porter Pitt/Prior I/The Eskimo

Joseph Porter Pitt - Harper’s husband. Mormon. Chief clerk for Justice Theodore Wilson of the Federal Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Prior I - The ghost of a dead Prior Walter from the thirteenth century. A blunt, grim, dutiful, medieval farmer.

The Eskimo - An eskimo in Antarctica. He shouldn’t be there.

Actor: Michela Micalizio

Characters: Harper Amaty Pitt/Martin Heller

Harper Amaty Pitt - Joe’s wife. Mormon. An agoraphobic with a mild Valium addiction.

Martin Heller - A Reagan administration Justice Department flack. A “Roy boy.”

Actor: Denise Poirier

Characters: Hannah Porter Pitt/Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz/Henry/ Ethel Rosenberg

Hannah Porter Pitt - Joe’s mother. Mormon. Currently residing in Salt Lake City, living off her deceased husband’s army pension.

Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz - An orthodox Jewish rabbi.

Henry - Roy’s doctor.

Actor: Paul Haley

Characters: Roy M. Cohn/Prior 2

Roy M. Cohn - A successful New York lawyer and unofficial power broker.

Prior 2 - The ghost of a dead Prior Walter from the seventeenth century. A Londoner, a Restoration-era sophisticate and bon vivant.

Actor: Casey Turner

Characters: The Angel/The Voice/Emily/Sister Ella Chapter/A Homeless Woman

The Angel - Four divine emanations, named Fluor, Phosphor, Lumen, and Candle, manifest in one.

The Voice - The voice of the Angel in Prior’s head.

Sister Ella Chapter - A Salt Lake City real estate saleswoman.

A Homeless Woman - An unmedicated psychotic who lives on the streets of the South Bronx.

An Interview with the Directors: Keith Powell Beyland and Peter Brown

Edited

for Length and

Assistant Director and Dramaturg Alex Oleksy sat down with Angels in America co-directors Peter Brown and Keith Powell Beyland to hear about their collaboration on this iconic 20th century epic.

Alex Oleksy (AO): To start, can you tell us a little bit about your careers, and how you came to Portland Stage?

Keith Powell Beyland (KPB): I actually graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in Playwriting. While in NYC, I was fortunate to work on the administrative side of theater with organizations such as Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, and City Center. After relocating to Portland in 2001 with my wife Vanessa, I realized that I was really craving some of the more contemporary theater that I had enjoyed in New York, so in 2010, I began my own organization—the non-profit Dramatic Repertory Company (DRC)—to direct and produce the kind of theater that I wanted to see. We developed a reputation for innovative, high quality work and, since many of our shows were performed at the Studio Theater at Portland Stage, we became close with the staff here at PS. I have admired the work being done here at PS for many years and it was very special to be asked by Anita to collaborate on a Mainstage production.

Peter Brown (PB): My career in Portland theater began at Portland Stage. I moved to Portland originally as an intern at Portland Stage in 1998. Prior to that I’d gotten a BA in Drama at Dartmouth, started my own community theater in Eastern Maine, and worked as a director at the community theater level, but my career really started at Portland Stage. After my internship, I was Production Manager here from 1999 to 2009. I learned so much as a theater artist being in tech for 7-8 shows a year for a decade. Simultaneous to working at Portland Stage, I developed careers as both a theater educator at Portland High

Clarity by Alex Oleksy

School and as an actor with local theaters, especially Mad Horse Theatre Company, where I became a company member and eventually Associate Artistic Director. After a decade of not directing, in 2009, I directed a production of The History Boys with local high school actors and Mad Horse company members, which was incredibly successful and set up my career as a director here in Portland. Shortly thereafter, I began acting and directing at Fenix Theatre Company, where I am now Artistic Director. In 2012, I began working with Keith and DRC, and it’s through that collaboration I find myself back at Portland Stage 15 years later.

AO: This is the first collaboration between Dramatic Repertory Company and Portland Stage. What have been the successes and challenges of this co-production?

PB: The successes far outweigh the challenges. The major challenge is getting two organizations in sync that operate on completely different schedules. At Portland Stage, theater is a day job. For every other theater in the community, including DRC, the artists all have day jobs. At Portland Stage, the process of putting up a production is compact. For DRC, the process is shorter days, fewer times a week, spread over a longer period of time. When DRC needed to start rehearsals for Angels, Portland Stage was

Peter Brown (l) and keitH Powell Beyland (r) talk aBout tHe set witH sCeniC designer anita stewart

working on Constitution with Clyde’s yet to come. Communication becomes even more important. One of the many successes of this production has been both organizations managing this challenge through great communication and honoring each other’s needs. The bigger success, of course, is that, through the combination of talent and resources, a production of this epic, techheavy, large-cast play is being mounted, something neither organization would likely have undertaken by itself.

KPB: To be able to present a work of this magnitude—both in importance and literal size and scope—has been such a tremendous opportunity that DRC would never have taken on if it were not for Portland Stage. To be able to hire a large cast of all local actors; have the resources that PS brings to the table in terms of set design and construction (Anita's set design is fantastic), costumes, lighting, behindthe-scenes support and so much more; all that has contributed to the success of this co-pro. DRC has never had the opportunity to work on this size of a scale before, so navigating through the logistics of a production like this has been the biggest challenge. That, and doing justice to the incredible masterwork that is Tony Kushner's Angels in America.

AO: Angels in America is quite the endeavor to produce, especially when you commit to Part I and Part II. Why is it important to tell this story now?

KPB: This play was written in 1991 and is set in the mid 1980s, but so many of its themes are still quite relevant today. There is a timeless quality to the work that continues to resonate with audiences today as it did in the '90's. Religion, politics, health crisis, sexuality, morality, discrimination, societal expectations—all this and more are part of the fabric of this incredible play.

PB: Though the events of Angels in America are set in the mid-1980s, the political and social issues of the play feel very contemporary: power, corruption, the struggle of marginalized groups, and the need for compassion and activism. There are many things touched on in this play that

reverberate between the Reagan era and now— the societal division, discussion of the ozone— and, of course, the character of Roy Cohn has never felt more relevant, given the presence of his most famous protégé in our lives.

AO: How would you describe your collaboration style?

KPB: There are several collaborations going on at once! Co-director Peter Brown and I have worked together on several previous DRC productions, and I am extremely fortunate to have found someone I can work closely with who both understands my directorial style and challenges me to see beyond it. I had a massive stroke in 2015 that left me with Aphasia and Apraxia—so I have difficulty communicating both verbally and in written form. As a co-director, Peter helps me convey my vision to the actors and design team, but also brings his much needed perspective to all aspects of the show. I could not have done this production without him! Collaborating with Portland Stage has been seamless—they have really let us present the production as DRC would, highly theatrical—so the audience is engaged right from the start. When we all get together to discuss the technical elements, we have been amazingly in sync! And of course collaborating with this group of actors has been highly motivating—DRC has worked with most of the actors in the production before, but the way everyone has come together to tell this story is a director's dream. Everyone involved has been so open with communication throughout the entire process—I can't imagine an easier way to work!

PB: Keith and I are friends. We have been doing theater together for a dozen years, starting as director-actor. We have collaborated twice before: once before Keith’s stroke and once after. In the first instance, we were working together on a production of Equivocation. I had brought him the script, which he loved and wanted to direct. He asked me to co-direct because the play concerned Shakespeare and involved a lot of Shakespearean language that he felt less comfortable with but he knew was a strong suit of mine. In this case he was the primary director and I was supporting his vision as a Shakespeare consultant. Codirecting Venus in Fur was different because of

Keith’s stroke, but it was still a situation of me supporting Keith’s vision as a director, because he loved that play so much and had selected for the season that had to be delayed due to his stroke. Through the experience, Keith and I developed a collaboration style that is the basis for how we’ve worked on Angels: I take the lead on most communications with the actors and designers out of necessity, but I take great care to ensure that Keith’s vision is being fully represented. Like Venus in Fur, Angels is a play Keith is very passionate about. He saw the original production of Millennium Approaches five times, and has strong opinions that I must interpret and translate. Fortunately, we have very similar aesthetics and tastes in plays, so we ultimately agree on the product, even when our focuses and means of arriving at an end result differ.

AO: When Angels premiered, it was a radical production that showed the brutality of the AIDS crisis onstage. As you work on it nearly 35 years later, are there moments that still strike you as revolutionary?

KPB: The entire work still feels revolutionary to me. I still find myself riveted to scenes I have watched dozens of times—Kushner's writing is like that. I think whether you are familiar with the work or if you are coming to it for the first time, there will be moments that take your breath away.

PB: Honestly, everything about Angels feels revolutionary to me. The subtitle of Angels in America is “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” How on earth did this play, with that subtitle, manage to play on Broadway in 1993 and take the world by storm? This was four years before Ellen came out on her sitcom, five years before Will & Grace premiered in 1998, the same year Matthew Shepard was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. America was not a gay-friendly place. Gays were vilified throughout the AIDS crisis, and Tony Kushner takes all that pain, forms his masterpiece (in two parts!), gets it produced on Broadway, and walks off with all the Tonys. Incredible! Then of course there’s the revolutionary style and scope of the play—the theatricality and dynamic storytelling style that would change what was possible for everything that came after.

AO: How do your backgrounds influence your individual approaches to the work?

PB: My approach to the play is most certainly influenced by my experiences as a gay man who lived through the 1980s. Seeing part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt as a college student as it was traveling throughout the country, listening to the names of people who had died being read aloud, was profoundly affecting. That experience and many others influence my sense of responsibility toward this play and crafting it truthfully.

KPB: I was in my teens and early 20s and living in NYC when this play premiered. Theater was a huge part of my experience growing up and I knew that the theater community was greatly affected by the AIDS crisis, and knew many gay individuals who were living through this nightmare. The first time I experienced this play was when it originally appeared on Broadway and I was blown away by the language usage and writing style as well as the theatrical presentation. Those are the elements I look for most when choosing a play for DRC to present. This play is easily in my top five favorites of all time and being given the opportunity to direct such a groundbreaking work—even 35 years later—is a literal dream come true.

AO: What do you hope audiences will gain from your production?

KPB: One of DRC's mission statements is to present challenging works that engage the heart and mind and I hope that is exactly what we achieve. I also hope that audiences here in Portland realize the amazing local talent we have right in our own backyard to present a show on this level!

PB: I hope that 35 years after its premiere on Broadway, this production provides an opportunity for new audiences to discover this play and experience a window into our history. As with all theater, I hope it promotes empathy and connection, two things that are desperately needed.

Community Connections: Interview with Katie Rutherford

Edited for length and clarity by Julia Jennings

JJ: To start off, could you tell me a little bit about the mission of the Frannie Peabody Center and what your work there looks like?

KR: Frannie Peabody Center is Maine's oldest and largest HIV/AIDS services organization, we've been around since the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Frannie Peabody was a force of nature, she lost her grandson to AIDS in 1981. Following his passing, she started going to support group meetings and meeting with families and recognizing the discrimination that people were facing and the lack of access to care. She was like a quintessential white-haired grandma, not someone you would expect to start handing out condoms to high school buses. She was instrumental in starting the AIDS Hotline and AIDS Project in Maine, along with many other influential folks. That all started in 1985, and without the medications, it was really just trying to help people navigate services and medical care at a time when it was really inaccessible and there was a lot of misinformation and stigma and hatred. And then in 1995, Frannie started Peabody House, which was a hospice care facility for people in the late stages of AIDS.

Peabody House and the AIDS Project operated independently for several years. Frannie passed away in 2001, at the age of 98. She worked right up until the end, she was Grand Marshal of the Pride parade in Portland two weeks before her death. Following her passing, the AIDS Project and Peabody House merged, and that's when we became Frannie Peabody Center. We work to provide comprehensive care for people living with HIV. That comes in the form of HIV case management, helping people navigate care and health insurance and the federal programs that assist people in accessing expensive medications and the web of medical care in America. We also provide federally-funded housing assistance, referred to as HOPWA grants, which stands for Housing

Opportunities for Persons With AIDS. It's the only HUD-funded program specifically for people living with HIV. We also are funded through the Maine CDC to perform confidential HIV and hepatitis C testing and linkage to care. We provide around 350 in-person HIV tests annually, and now we distribute HIV self-test kits—about 800 of those annually, in partnership with a number of organizations across the state. Most of our clients are either living under the federal poverty line or considered low-income, so we just help people navigate medical care and make sure they have access to HIV meds. It's a much different picture now than it was in the early ’80s, because of the medications, but without access to those resources, it might as well be 1983 all over again.

JJ: That leads right into my next question. I'm curious, how have you seen approaches to care and perceptions around HIV/AIDS change over the years?

KR: I know Angels in America touches on this. In the beginning, especially in America, HIV and AIDS disproportionately impacted gay men, that was really the population that was

katie rutHerford at tHe soutHern maine aids walk in 2017.

hit the hardest in the very beginning in the United States. And almost simultaneously, it started to really impact people who inject drugs. Those two populations in particular had already experienced a great deal of stigma and discrimination, and so to be hit by a pandemic that is further stoked by fear and ignorance didn't do anybody any favors. And it certainly didn't motivate the federal government to pay attention to the crisis. And I think that stigma definitely persists today, people experience stigma in all different ways. The epidemic in the United States today is disproportionately impacting women of color and transgender individuals—again, populations that have historically had limited access to healthcare. So it's still a challenge and a struggle for a lot of the individuals that we serve. A lot of people think of Southern Maine as a very liberal area, but everybody's different as far as feeling comfortable sharing their status, whether that's publicly or with a partner. Isolation is very common, still, among people living with HIV. So the science has certainly advanced, but a lot of folks still deal with the day-to-day stigma and isolation that was prominent in the ’80s.

JJ: How does HIV/AIDS treatment and care in Maine compare to and fit into the rest of AIDS treatment in the United States?

KR: There are a couple of federal programs that really came out of the activism of the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and not just for HIV care, but for healthcare models in general, and chronic disease management and harm reduction. There are programs like the Ryan White CARE Act that came out in the early ’90s,

which really expands access to care for people living with HIV, recognizing that healthcare, especially for expensive chronic disease management, is impossible to maintain if you're on a program like Medicaid. Ryan White essentially provides access to care to folks who are above the income thresholds for Medicaid, but also includes individuals who can't access Medicaid because of immigration status. It's really unique in that way and it can support people up to 500% of the federal poverty line. Programs like Ryan White and HOPWA through HUD are providing wraparound care and recognizing that being able to stay healthy and manage chronic disease isn't just about medications. It's about housing, it's about being able to take care of your family, it's about employment, it's about mental health. These programs are recognizing the whole individual and not just trying to fix a specific challenge with a single solution.

And Maine is a relatively low-incidence state compared to other states in the country, we only have about 40 to 60 new HIV cases annually. But as we saw during the COVID pandemic, low numbers doesn't necessarily mean low infection rates. It can also point to: do people have access to tests, are people aware? So that's always a question, but technically we are a low-incidence state. Maine has one of the highest rates of viral load suppression in the country, even as compared to other low-incidence states. And that's certainly due to the strong programs and community partnerships that we have, and obviously the resilience and engagement among the individuals that we work with. Anytime HIV viral load is suppressed, it means that people can remain healthy with HIV, it also means that they can't transmit the virus.

The flip side of that is that Maine also leads the nation in late-stage AIDS diagnoses, which tells us that people aren't getting tested soon enough. And that's an unfortunate impact of being low-incidence—HIV isn't top of mind. HIV isn't included in STI [sexually-transmitted infection] screening, so we tried to pass legislation (and it did pass two sessions ago) so that HIV will be included in STI screening. But right now we're seeing when you go in for an STI test and say, "Oh, give me the full panel,"

tHe soutHern maine aids walk in 2016.

people think they're getting tested for HIV, but it's not necessarily part of it. So we're trying to help people identify the need to ask and providing resources so that folks know how to get tested.

JJ: How can Mainers get involved with supporting HIV/AIDS treatment and care?

KR: I think the first thing is just talking about it with your loved ones or your family members. Recognizing that it's not just Maine, it's not just the US, it's not just Africa. It's still a global epidemic, there are still populations that are deeply impacted by HIV, whether because of low access to care and medications, remote areas, discrimination, stigma, homophobia. So talking about those issues and how they impact our community is really important, as is approaching it from a place of compassion. Because HIV

impacts all of us. It's something that is often put into a tug of war. PEPFAR, which is a bipartisan international program that greatly expanded access to HIV care across the globe, is now being played with in politics, in this big tug of war of reauthorization, having to do with family planning and abortion care. It's become like a political toy, and that's really, really scary for a program that has almost 25 years under its belt of incredible global impact as far as improving people's lives. So it's not over, is what I would say to folks. We need to make sure that we support people who are living with HIV. Continue to fight stigma, continue to fight for better access to care, and make sure that everybody knows their HIV status. That's really the biggest opportunity to get people engaged.

frannie PeaBody in Her greater Portland landmarks liBrary.

Bully, Coward, Victim: The Enduring Legacy of Roy Cohn

by Julia Jennings

Part of what distinguishes Angels in America as such a notable product of its time is the inclusion of real historical figures in the plot, namely legal giant Roy Cohn, who features as a significant character. Cohn, both a noted AIDS victim and perpetrator of anti-gay government policy, caught the attention of playwright Tony Kushner when he saw the AIDS memorial quilt with a square dedicated to Roy Cohn, reading “Bully, Coward, Victim.” As Kushner explores in his characterization of Cohn, the legacy of this flawed demagogue is marked by a long history of discriminatory policy and underhanded dealings. Though he succumbed to an AIDS-related death in 1986, the reverberations of Cohn’s power are still felt today, a thread of conservative despotism beginning with the Rosenberg conviction and the McCarthy trials, and ending with the autocratic rise of Donald Trump.

Throughout Angels in America, Tony Kushner invokes the presence of another historical figure in the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, who returns to haunt Cohn in his weakened state. As described in the play, Cohn—at age 23— served as the prosecutor in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, resulting in their being sentenced to death by electric chair, proving his shrewd determination. In retrospect, legal experts posit that, indeed, the government never had enough evidence to convict Ethel, but Cohn was deviously persuasive. He was known to say, “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.” On breaks during the trial, Cohn would use a payphone to call the judge on the case, Judge Irving Kaufman, and encourage him to impose the death penalty. Cohn also worked to persuade the star witness (and Ethel’s brother), David Greenglass, to change his testimony, further incriminating Ethel. Cohn’s manipulative prowess in the Rosenberg case caught the attention of conservative giants J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Joe McCarthy, and McCarthy hired Cohn as chief counsel soon after.

Cohn quickly became a bastion of McCarthyism, supporting McCarthy in his efforts to purge the United States government of communists. After the initial momentum of the Red Scare, McCarthy was met with some skepticism, and soon began a quieter project, the Lavender Scare, a series of hearings in which Cohn and McCarthy worked to oust federal employees who were suspected of being gay. Cohn was responsible for a majority of the questioning during these hearings, underscoring the irony of the movement. “In lavender Washington, Cohn was known as both a closeted homosexual and homophobic, among those leading the charge against supposedly gay witnesses who he and others believed should lose their government jobs because they were ‘security risks,’” journalist Marie Brennan wrote in Vanity Fair

roy CoHn in 1964

Cohn’s hypocritical reign was soon put on national display during the 1954 ArmyMcCarthy hearings, in which Cohn was tried for attempting to obtain special privileges for Private David Schine. Schine was a close friend and (as it is widely believed) romantic interest of Cohn’s who had recently been drafted into the Army. When the Army refused to offer Schine a commission, Cohn claimed he would “wreck the Army.” The ensuing hearings were televised and watched by 20 million Americans, and homophobic rumors began to swirl around Schine, Cohn, and even McCarthy. It was during these hearings that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, posited his famous question: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?,” marking the beginning of the end of McCarthyism. Cohn resigned from McCarthy’s staff shortly after the hearings, but played it as a win, returning to New York to make his mark on high society. (After Schine’s death in 1996, Tony Kushner wrote a one-act play called G. David Schine in Hell, depicting Schine arriving in hell and reuniting with Cohn, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover.)

In New York, Cohn quickly clawed his way to the top, executing aggressive legal maneuvers, befriending gossip columnists, and throwing parties attended by celebrities such as Andy Warhol and Norman Mailer. Eventually, in 1973, Roy Cohn crossed paths with 23-yearold Donald Trump at a ritzy nightclub in New York, where Trump asked Cohn for advice on dodging anti-discrimination law in housing

practices. The Trump family soon retained Cohn to represent them, and Cohn took on Trump as a protégé. “Donald is my best friend,” Cohn was known to say. “Donald calls me 15 to 20 times a day.” Columnist Liz Smith observed that “Donald lost his moral compass when he made an alliance with Roy Cohn.” Trump was not Cohn’s first protégé, and would certainly not be his last. As portrayed in Angels in America through the relationship with Joe, Cohn had the habit of taking young men under his wing to teach them the ropes of legal maneuvering, sometimes with questionable intent. “These were unrequited relationships. The way he would expiate the sexual energy was possessive mentoring,” said Cohn’s cousin David L. Marcus.

With Cohn as his guide, Trump expanded his reach beyond the real estate of Queens and Brooklyn, and joined the ranks of New York’s most powerful circles. According to author Sam Roberts, Cohn’s influence on Trump could be boiled down to a three-pronged strategy: “1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counterattack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.” Trump took this teaching and ran with it, implementing many elements of Cohn’s underhanded politics in his own political rise. From the beginning, Cohn seemed to be aware of the potential magnitude of this mentoring. “Donald Trump is probably one of the most important names in America today,” Cohn

roy CoHn, Joe mCCartHy, and g. daVid sCHine.

The World of Angels In

said to the press in 1984. “What started off as a meteor mounting from New York and going upward is going to touch this country and parts of the world. Donald just wants to be the biggest winner of all.”

Not long after, in 1986, Cohn was finally disbarred. After decades of undermining the law in his defense of mob bosses, Rupert Murdoch, the Trump family, and the Catholic Church, Cohn was caught stealing from his clients, and faced his inevitable downfall, as Kushner portrays in Angels in America. Cohn died of AIDS just a few weeks later, succumbing to the disease which he so vehemently denied having, claiming instead to have been suffering from liver cancer. Even in this denial, Cohn had taken advantage of his connections, and President Ronald Reagan (who Cohn had helped elect) secured an experimental treatment for Cohn, despite Reagan refusing

to even acknowledge the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Trump reportedly stopped seeing and calling Cohn after it became clear that he had AIDS.

Indeed, in the end, Cohn was abandoned by many of his closest allies. However, the impact of Cohn’s spiteful dealings has indelibly altered the course of American politics: “The malevolent spirit of Roy Cohn has taken over an entire party, powerful elements of the press, and a good part of the public,” reflected journalist George Packer in 2019. As the 2024 election rapidly approaches, bearing the possibility of another Trump term, Kushner’s prophetic inclusion of Roy Cohn in his script remains relevant, now more than ever. While the figure of Roy Cohn finds the spotlight in the fictional Angels in America, his outsized impact still actively grips the American political stage.

roy CoHn sHaking ronald reagan's Hand in tHe oVal offiCe, 1983.

AIDS, ACT UP, and its Reverberations

by Alex Oleksy

On June 5, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published an article describing Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare form of pneumonia found in five young, previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles. Along with pneumonia, researchers found that all five men were experiencing failures of the immune system. By the time the article was released, two of the men had already passed from health complications. While it wasn’t known at the time of publication, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic had begun.

Within a month, reports across the country came in from gay men experiencing similar health issues, and the CDC established the Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma (a rare form of skin cancer related to AIDS) and Opportunistic Infections. By the end of 1981, there were 337 reported cases of individuals with severe immune deficiency in the United States, and 130 people were dead by December 31. Despite this surge in cases, the US was slow to act: the only money raised for research, public or private, was $6,635 gathered by playwright Larry Kramer (who eventually went on to write the groundbreaking play The Normal Heart).

It took President Ronald Reagan four years to even mention the AIDS epidemic in public, with his administration's first acknowledgment occurring in 1985, the same year in which Angels in America is set. By the end of the year, nearly 17,000 individuals had died of AIDS-related illnesses, with reported cases rapidly increasing. In October 1985, the US government finally allocated nearly $190 million for research, but the findings were slow, and the CDC announced that more people had been diagnosed in 1985 than all previous years combined. The system was failing the LGBTQ+ community, especially Black and Latine members, who were disproportionately affected.

In the face of 60,000 worldwide deaths, Larry Kramer rallied New York City’s LGBTQ+ activism

scene and founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987. Carrying out daily acts of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, ACT UP aimed to bring attention to the epidemic and rebel against the homophobic attitudes of the Reagan administration and conservative populations. Protests included lawsuits against Northwest Orient Airlines, which had barred HIV-positive people from flying, and public demonstrations against individuals and organizations spreading misinformation about the severity of AIDS. These acts of collective dissent were heavily inspired by the work of civil rights activists in the 1960s, whose organized boycotts and demonstrations greatly influenced the racial trajectory of the United States.

ACT UP’s largest protest occurred on January 22 and 23, 1991, declared the “Day of Desperation,” and served as both a protest for Operation Desert Storm and the lack of news coverage on the crisis. Activists stormed the Grand Central Terminal, as well as the studio of CBS Evening News mid-broadcast, shouting “Silence = Death” and “Fight AIDS, Not Arabs.” From the earliest days of the organization, LGBTQ+ activists understood that the epidemic did not exist in a political vacuum, but was instead connected to the oppression of marginalized populations all over the United States and across the globe. The Reagan administration afforded billions of dollars in funding for imperialist missions overseas, money that could have supported the communities dying at alarming rates at home.

Despite these large-scale protests, the AIDS epidemic did not disappear. The following year, AIDS became the #1 cause of death for American men aged 25–44, eventually taking the same position for all Americans of the same age range in 1994. The highly publicized protests of ACT UP drastically shifted the stigma around HIV/AIDS, but many original members wouldn’t live to see the fruits of their labor. By 1997, when the first major decrease

in cases was recorded, over half of infected adults had died from health complications.

While major advances in treatment, medication, and destigmatization have pulled the AIDS epidemic under control in the 21st century, 630,000 people worldwide died from HIV-related illnesses in 2022, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). ACT UP remains very vocal and active in promoting public health. Recent actions have focused on increasing STI testing and access to PrEP (an HIV preventative), as well as the viral “joints for jabs” campaign, which encouraged Americans to get vaccinated for COVID-19 with free marijuana incentives.

The organization has also continued its global advocacy during events like the Day of Desperation by supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestine. “Palestinians have faced unprecedented violence before and after October 7,” a press release from the organization stated. “ACT UP formed in the urgent response to the AIDS crisis, so it is not lost upon us that Palestine is living under medical apartheid. The very hospitals bombed by Israel in Gaza were the same ones providing HIV screenings, antiretroviral treatments, and therapy for HIV-positive Palestinians, among other critical and life-saving services.”

Fighting AIDS not only means providing healthcare in the United States, but also ensuring that medical providers around the globe are staunchly defended. ACT UP’s civil disobedience also inspires activism beyond HIV/AIDS. Acclaimed photographer Nan Goldin, whose early work documented the New York LGBTQ+ scene at the height of the epidemic, founded Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (PAIN) to protest the Sackler family’s pharmaceutical empire and manipulation of the healthcare system to create the opioid crisis. (The Sackler family is responsible for the proliferation of Valium prescriptions, the same drug Harper is addicted to in Angels in America.) Goldin’s work with PAIN has included “die-ins” at museums around the United States and organizing grass-roots campaigns in support of overdose prevention centers in New York State.

In the face of government silence and existential threats, ACT UP helped build a political nucleus for the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s and beyond. Whether in the United States or abroad, for medical freedom or anti-imperialist movements, the influence of ACT UP on 21st century politics cannot be overstated. Not only did the organization ensure that generations of activists could live to see today, but it has committed itself to defending the lives of generations to come.

an aCt uP Protest in 1990.

Glossary

by Alex Oleksy

Agoraphobia: Abnormal fear of being helpless in a situation from which escape may be difficult or embarrassing, characterized by the avoidance of open or public places.

Appeals Court: Any one of 13 courts in the US below the Supreme Court.

AZT: An antiviral drug that inhibits replication of some retroviruses (such as HIV) and is used to treat AIDS; called also azidothymidine or zidovudine.

Bayeux Tapestry: A masterpiece of 11th century Romanesque art, likely commissioned by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror’s halfbrother, to embellish his newly-built cathedral in Bayeux in 1077. The tapestry tells the story of the events surrounding the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy.

Bon vivant: A sociable person who has cultivated and refined tastes especially with respect to food and drink.

Bourgeois: Of, relating to, or characteristic of the social middle class.

Brahmin: A colloquial term for Boston’s upper class, often Ivy League–educated.

Bubbulah: A Yiddish term of endearment meaning sweetie or darling.

Shirley Booth: (1898–1992) An American actress. One of 24 performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, Booth was the recipient of an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Tony Awards. Primarily a theater actress, Booth began her career on Broadway in 1915. She starred in the 1952 film adaptation of William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba.

Candida: A genus of parasitic fungi resembling yeasts, occurring especially in the mouth, vagina, and intestinal tract. They are usually benign, but can become pathogenic.

Roy Cohn: (1927–1986) An American lawyer and prosecutor who came to prominence for his role in the conspiracy trial against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, he became a prominent political fixer in New York City.

Comme la merde: “Like shit” in French.

Cecil DeMille: (1881–1959) American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is considered a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history.

Emanation: The origination of the world by a series of hierarchically descending radiations from the spiritual essence of God through intermediate stages to matter.

Louis Farrakhan: (b. 1933) The leader (from 1978) of the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with Black nationalism. Farrakhan was often criticized for anti-Semitic comments, including praising Adolf Hitler.

Feh: A Yiddish word for disgust or contempt.

a PHoto of CeCil demille.

Flackman: A person chosen by a group or organization (usually in a difficult situation) to speak officially for them to the public and answer questions and criticisms.

Emma Goldman: (1869–1940) Lithuanianborn anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Goy: Yiddish for a non-Jewish person.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: (1770–1831) German philosopher, one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics.

Hemophilia: A hereditary, sex-linked blood defect occurring almost exclusively in males that is marked by delayed clotting of the blood with prolonged or excessive internal or external bleeding after injury or surgery.

J. Edgar Hoover: (1895–1972) United States government official who served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1924 until his death in 1972. He built the agency into a highly effective, and occasionally controversial, arm of federal law enforcement.

Inexorable: Not to be persuaded or stopped.

Ipso facto: From Latin, by that very fact or act; as an inevitable result.

Jesse Jackson: (b. 1941) American civil rights leader, Baptist minister, and politician whose bids for the US presidency (in the Democratic Party’s nomination races in 1983–84 and 1987–88) were the most successful by an African American until 2008. He established the National Rainbow Coalition, which sought equal rights for Black Americans, women, and the gay community. During his 1983 campaign, he drew criticism for his relationship with Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and for making a disparaging remark about New York’s Jewish community.

Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS): A neoplastic disease that occurs especially in individuals coinfected with HIV and a specific herpesvirus that affects especially the skin and mucous membranes; marked usually by pink to reddish-brown or bluish plaques, macules, papules, or nodules especially on the lower extremities.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick: (1926–2006) An American political scientist and diplomat, who served as foreign policy adviser under US President Ronald Reagan. The first American woman to

a PHoto of emma goldman.

Jesse JaCkson in 1983.

serve as ambassador to the United Nations (1981–85).

Ed Koch: (1924–2013) American politician who served as mayor of New York City (1978–89) and was known for his tenacity and brashness. Koch was criticized for his handling of the AIDS crisis and his relationship with the Black community, with actions like shutting down a hospital in a Black neighborhood causing increased political tensions.

Labile: Readily or continually undergoing chemical, physical, or biological change or breakdown.

La grande geste: “The Big Gesture” in French; a flourish.

Little Sheba: The name of the runaway dog in William Inge’s play Come Back, Little Sheba.

Litvak: A Lithuanian Jew.

Lymphadenopathy: Abnormal enlargement of the lymph nodes.

Ma cherie bichette: A French term of endearment, literally “my little doe.”

Mark of Cain: A phrase that originated in the story of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis. In the stories, after Cain killed his brother Abel, God marked him. If someone harmed Cain, the damage would come back sevenfold.

Maudlin: Weakly and effusively sentimental.

Joseph McCarthy: (1908–1957) Conservative American politician who served in the US Senate (1947–57), representing Wisconsin, and who lent his name to the term McCarthyism. He dominated the US political climate in the early 1950s through his sensational but unproven charges of communist subversion in high government circles.

Edwin Meese III: (b. 1931) American attorney, law professor, author, and member of the Republican Party who served in Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan presidential transition

team (1980–81), and the Reagan presidential administration (1981–1985). Meese was eventually appointed and confirmed as the 75th United States Attorney General (1985–1988), a position he held until resigning in 1988 amidst the Wedtech scandal.

The Nation: American weekly journal of opinion, the oldest such continuously published periodical still extant. Considered the leading liberal magazine of its kind.

Nebbish: From Yiddish, a timid, meek, or ineffectual person.

NIH: National Institutes of Health.

Richard Nixon: (1913–1994) The 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A lawyer and member of the Republican Party, Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only US president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

The Norman Conquest: The 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror.

Ontological: Relating to or based upon being or existence.

riCHard nixon in 1972.

Positivism: A theory that theology and metaphysics are earlier, imperfect modes of knowledge and that science is the ultimate source of knowledge about society, nature, and other aspects of life.

Ronald Reagan: (1911–2004) American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989 (the height of the AIDS crisis). A member of the Republican Party, he is considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in American history.

Restoration: The period in English history usually held to coincide with the reign of Charles II, but sometimes considered to extend through the reign of James II.

Ethel Rosenberg: (1915–1953) One of the first American civilians to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime (along with her husband Julius).

Secular humanism: Humanism viewed especially as relying on reason, logic, and naturalism as opposed to religious dogma and supernaturalism.

Shtetl: A small Jewish town or village formerly found in Eastern Europe.

Shtup: A Yiddish word meaning to have sex with someone.

Kate Smith: (1907–1986) An American contralto. Referred to as the First Lady of Radio, Smith is well known for her renditions of "God Bless America" and "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain."

Sodom: A place notorious for vice or corruption; a reference to Biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by God for their wickedness.

Sonorous: In regards to sound, imposing or impressive in effect or style.

Sophisticate: A sophisticated person.

Sophistry: Subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation.

Stalinism: The theory and practice of communism developed by Stalin from Marxism-Leninism, marked especially by rigid authoritarianism, widespread use of terror, and often emphasis on Russian nationalism.

Steppe: One of the vast, usually level, and treeless tracts in southeastern Europe or Asia.

Walter Winchell: (1897–1972) US journalist and broadcaster whose newspaper columns and radio broadcasts containing news and gossip gave him a massive audience and much influence in the United States in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.

Yahrzeit: The anniversary of the death of a parent or near relative observed annually among Jews by the recital of the Kaddish and the lighting of a memorial candle or lamp.

Yid: A slur for a Jewish person.

Zaftig: Having a full rounded figure: pleasingly plump.

Zeitgeist: The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

a raBBi ligHting yaHrzeit Candles

Art in the Plague

by Jessi Stier

“We’re on the verge of getting literature out of this [the AIDS crisis] that will be a renaissance.”

-Michael Denneny, of St. Martin’s Press, during the AIDS crisis

Great global challenges and social issues have been the inspiration for artistic works for decades. Artists have long used their work as a tool to respond to the world around them: navigating issues of climate change, gender inequality, healthcare, and more. The AIDS epidemic was no exception. In addition to Angels in America, the AIDS epidemic brought works to light such as Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, Terrence McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion!, and Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer prize–winning rock opera RENT in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Richard Goldstein, writer for The Village Voice (an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City—a gay epicenter, and also where RENT is set) stated at the time, “In an ironic sense, I think that AIDS is good for art. I think it will produce great works that will outlast and transcend the epidemic.” Goldstein’s words held true, as many of these works are still produced in theaters today.

In the 1980s, AIDS was a disease with heavy political implications; significant misinformation was spread about its causes, who could contract it, and its consequences, resulting in widespread paranoia. This paranoia led to significant homophobia, creating a dangerous reality for gay people at the time. There was also a lack of mainstream media support, with many outlets refusing to cover the issue with the magnitude it required in order to properly educate the public. The New York Times was one of the first major newspapers to address AIDS, but the US media did not actively write about it with full force until Rock Hudson (a major actor at the time) died from AIDS in 1985. A study by Princeton Survey Research Associates International shows from 1981–1984 there were about 125 articles published about AIDS per year in major news sources, compared to 2,500 in 1985

after Hudson’s death. The media needed a figurehead in order to increase its coverage.

Artists were not willing to wait. An example of this is Larry Kramer, who, when doctors suggested men stop having sex, strongly encouraged the Gay Men’s Health Crisis organization to deliver the message to as many gay men as possible. When they refused, Kramer wrote an essay entitled "1,112 and Counting" which was published in 1983 in The New York Native, a gay newspaper. The essay discussed the spread of the disease, the lack of government response, and the reluctance of some parts of the gay community toward protest. The essay was intended to scare gay men and demand them to protest government indifference toward the epidemic. Tony Kushner took note of the essay and recalled, "With that one piece, Larry changed my world. He changed the world for all of us."

Furthermore, artists sought to zoom in on the gay experience and its relationship to AIDS, in an attempt to humanize the disease and serve

"doCtor Beak from rome" engraVing, rome 1656

as vehicles for greater understanding. Since theater has long been made by gay artists and celebrates a heavy influence from gay culture, it was impacted deeply by the AIDS crisis. Artists were losing friends and collaborators every day, which further motivated them to create art surrounding the epidemic. David Román, English professor at the University of Southern California and author of Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS, attests to this, claiming that “these early AIDS plays set out to inform audiences of the physical, emotional, and social effects of AIDS.” In some cases, playwrights wrote from the perspective of being gay at the time (such as Tony Kushner in Angels in America) or living with AIDS themselves (Larry Kramer in The Normal Heart, though he would receive his diagnosis a few years after the play’s premiere). One of the first and lesser known theatrical pieces about AIDS was a monologue called One, performed by Jeff Hagedorn in the early 1980s. Hagedorn’s mission was to discredit a widespread, incorrect theory that AIDS is only a “gay disease,” and rather reinforce that it affects everyone. In the monologue, an unnamed gay man dialogues with the audience about who might have infected him, and who he might

have infected without knowing it—encouraging education and awareness about sexual health for everyone.

Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart presents a somewhat different response to the epidemic. As previously mentioned, Larry Kramer was not afraid to call out the gay community about their navigation of the AIDS crisis in his work. In addition to highlighting various authority figures that he felt did not do enough for the disease (NYC mayor Ed Koch, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis), he calls upon the gay community to be more responsible about practicing safe sex in the wake of the crisis. In The Normal Heart, he argues that gay men need to pursue monogamous relationships in order to stop the spread of the disease and more carefully track their sexual history. At one point, the protagonist of the play, Ned, asks the gay community, “Why didn’t you guys ask for the right to get married instead of the right to legitimize promiscuity?” The Normal Heart represents a key element of creating art during a plague: that artists can use the theatrical medium as a form of resistance, responding

PlaywrigHt larry kramer in 2007.

to issues however they see fit, even if their message is controversial, and bringing to light uncomfortable truths that audiences might not want to hear or face. Theater is often used as a form of escapism, but during intense times such as an epidemic, it is used as a tool to compel audiences to reflect inwards about their own biases and behaviors.

This sentiment continued throughout artmaking during a more recent epidemic, COVID-19. Similarly to the AIDS crisis, artists felt compelled to share their physical and emotional responses to such global devastation through theater. There was also an additional variable; due to the way COVID-19 is contracted and how little was known about it in early 2020, theatermakers not only needed to rethink what they wanted to write and perform about, but also how they were going to do it. With the world going into lockdown, artists were forced to think innovatively about new ways to present theater. This led to productions being done online over video conferencing platforms, outdoors, or in traditional theatrical spaces (but pre-recorded).

Suzan-Lori Parks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, wrote a short play every day while being inside for 13 months in response to COVID-19. In 2023, the works were collected into a full-length play titled Plays for the Plague Year, which was performed at the Public Theater in NYC. Parks originally wrote the plays through a personal assignment she gave herself in order to persevere mentally while spending so much time in her home—to be present, stay observant, and write every day. When talking about the piece, Parks notes, “I have so much fear and so much trepidation. And I think a lot of us realized during the first year or so of the pandemic that there were things we were afraid of, are afraid of, and that we had to really look at those things.” Parks' statement echoes the idea that during times of a plague, theater is used to shine a light on truths that might be painful for audiences to acknowledge in order for them to grow. Additionally, as a Black playwright, she acknowledges that the play touches on themes of death, given George Floyd’s murder by the police in 2020, just a few months into lockdown.

Parks continues, “We think that to grieve bad things that have happened would bring us down. The opposite is true. When we look with love and with interest and curiosity towards something that—something difficult that happened, we are released from its power to weigh us down.”

On a smaller scale, many theaters around the country created short play festivals, encouraging playwrights to submit work about the COVID-19 pandemic. One such festival was at Lower Depth Theatre in Los Angeles. The theater’s website described the festival as a response to the great loss of life globally, the attempts to stop the spread of the virus, and the navigation of the “new normal” of social distancing, sheltering in place, and wearing masks. The festival produced 11 ten-minute plays over Zoom with actors from across the country, with an additional focus on how the pandemic “impacted and reshaped the lives of people across racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and gender boundaries.”

This initiative also carried through to colleges and universities. Similar to the AIDS crisis, young peoples’ activism and creativity were huge forces of hope during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is shown in the many collegiate productions, varying in content and form, created in response to the virus. One such production was Stories from a Pandemic at Lake Erie College, a piece of verbatim theater derived from interviews with real people about how they were navigating the pandemic physically and mentally. Dr. Jerry Jaffe, theater professor and director of the piece, explained that he had never brought a verbatim-style performance to the college, but felt that creating theater about the pandemic warranted it in order to create a powerful experience that featured genuine stories. “Some of these stories are really tragic,” he said. “The effect of hearing them presented in this format is very moving.” Jaffe’s words affirm that creating art during the plague is more than writing a typical play, essay, or performance. It is a tool for the artist to process the reality around them, call others to action, or share stories that might previously have been disregarded.

What Does it Mean to Write an Epic?

by Julia Jennings

Angels in America, a sprawling, two-part, sevenhour phenomenon, may well be the closest thing we have to a modern American epic. Playwright Tony Kushner first embarked on this monumental project on commission from Eureka Theatre in 1986, in response to the rapid spread of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. For Kushner, this was an understandably significant responsibility: “I don’t want this to just be about AIDS. I want people to see AIDS,” he remarked. From its conception, Angels in America was designed to serve as a visible, personal testament to the political and cultural phenomena of the age. This was, indeed, an epic undertaking.

The epic is a narrative genre defined by grandiosity in scope, length, and material. Early epics often followed heroic stories of great men. The Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to 2000 BCE, is widely believed to be the first epic, beginning a tradition of oral and written storytelling that later gave way to epic poems such as The Iliad and The Odyssey in the 8th century BCE, which followed Greek heroes Achilles and Odysseus in the Trojan War and its aftermath. This tradition endured for centuries, growing and changing to fit the times. With the publishing of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in 1869, the understanding of what an epic could be expanded to include novels and works of theater. The highly

political nature of War and Peace lent the epic genre an inherently political element. Indeed, Bertolt Brecht’s concept of “epic theater” in the early to mid-20th century classified a genre of works that were political in nature and forced audiences to examine the reality of the world around them. Angels in America certainly fits this description.

Many theatrical epics presented in the modern world take the form of operas or stagings of Shakespearean tragedies and histories such as King Lear and Troilus and Cressida , plays that pair heroic stories with heightened stakes and language. Another modern manifestation of the epic is simply the form of long plays, such as Lincoln Center Festival’s 2010 adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Demons , which had a twelve-hour runtime, Elevator Repair Service’s eight-hour Gatz (a reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby), and even Robert Wilson’s CIVIL warS , a twelvehour multinational opera commissioned for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which was ultimately canceled in a budget crisis.

As explained by New York Times theater critic Alexis Soloski, going to a long play is an entirely unique viewing experience: “A 90-minute play I experience on my time, but during a day-long event, one must give oneself over to a different sense of time, to surrender to someone else's world,” she stated. “Also, the greater interaction with other audience members—seeing one another repeatedly in queues for the toilet, at meal breaks, in the rush to retake seats…the theater comes to seem less private and, as in its earliest manifestations, more communal.” This is part of what contributes to the epic nature of a piece—inviting audience members to give themselves over to something greater.

Clocking in at a runtime of over seven hours, Angels in America Parts 1 and 2 certainly leans into this grandiose communal sensibility, ending its extended engagement with the audience by employing direct address. “Bye now,” Prior says. “You are fabulous, each and every one,

BetHesda fountain in Central Park

and I love you all. And I bless you. More life. And bless us all.” By inviting in the audience in this manner, Angels in America reaches beyond the scope of the play to touch contemporary America, connecting the nation to its recent past. This understanding of Angels as an intimate, shared experience between audience, material and performers has been integral to the play since its earliest development.

Ellen McLaughlin, who originated the role of the Angel, recalls being heckled by an audience member when she came out to announce the fifth act of an early performance of Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika. “Act 5?! Oh my God!” the audience member stood up to yell. “Do you know what time it is?! It’s midnight! How long is this act?” Ultimately, that audience member would decide to stay through the end of the performance, but Perestroika quickly became infamous for its rambling, unwieldy runtime. The original draft of Perestroika, which Kushner wrote in ten days, was 700 pages. The cast began their read through at 10am and by 6:30pm, they were still going.

However, it is exactly because of the play’s grand scope, not in spite of it, that makes Angels such a groundbreaking, enduring success. “Any debate about what this play means or does not mean for Broadway seems, in the face of the work itself, completely beside the point,” commented New York Times essayist Frank Rich in 1993. “Angels in America speaks so powerfully because something far larger and more urgent than the future of the theater is at stake. It really is history that Mr. Kushner intends to crack open.” And indeed, Angels seems to have enjoyed unique success in this endeavor.

Many American playwrights have attempted to capture the zeitgeist of a particular era, and many have done so with great success. Plays such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, as well as August Wilson’s ten-play American Century Cycle (including works such as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, and The Piano Lesson), have exquisitely captured and portrayed glimpses into eras of American life. Even more recently, Oregon Shakespeare Festival launched their American Revolutions: United States History Cycle, which has commissioned and developed

new plays about moments of change in America, resulting in groundbreaking works such as Paula Vogel’s Indecent, Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, Dominique Morisseau’s The Confederates, and the 1491s’ Between Two Knees.

While many of these plays shed light on the values, ideas, and injustices present in moments in American history, few American plays have ever measured up to the epic scope of Angels in America in its grandiose running time and ability to ask the incisive questions of the age on a significant, quasi-Shakespearean scale. Meryl Streep, who played Hannah in the 2003 HBO Angels in America miniseries, said of Kushner, “Certain writers meet their moment. They emerge with a sensibility that explains it all to us and we recognize it. I don’t know why that is or how it happens.” Indeed, Kushner’s work not only explained the moment, but actually shifted the conversation around the American understanding of AIDS, and of queerness as a whole. Theater producer Rocco Landesman remembers, “It was exhilarating. There was rapid change around the attitude toward gays, and Angels was a catalyst for that without being didactic.…It really engaged a discussion that hadn’t been going on before, to some degree, in the culture at large.”

What appears to have contributed so centrally to Kushner’s success is his unique ability to view the overarching topics of the age from within the framework of seemingly ordinary American gay men, to make the epic genre accessible to the modern American audience member. “In America, there’s a great attempt to divest private life of political meaning,” he said while developing Angels. “We have to recognize that our lives are fraught with politics. The oppression and suppression of homosexuality is part of a larger political agenda.” Thus, by holding the personal and the political in such biting dialogue, Kushner was able to create a grand work of art that fit its moment with incredible precision. And American audiences received it as such. “People no longer build cathedrals, as they did a thousand years ago, to greet the next millennium,” remarked critic Frank Rich, “But Angels in America both spins forward and spirals upward in its own way, for its own time.”

Protesting the Great Work

by Jessi Stier

Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is inherently a work of protest. Written during the 1980s and produced in the early 1990s, the play conveyed Kushner’s objections toward many central themes of the time, including homophobia, the conservative policies of the Reagan presidency, fear-mongering regarding the AIDS crisis, and paranoia toward the impending millennium. Inspired by Kushner’s personal experiences as a gay man during the period, the play highlights these social issues in a very visceral way. Kushner’s vulnerability and vivid imagery in the play deeply captured the attention of Broadway audiences and critics, resulting in the two-part original Broadway production— Millennium Approaches (1993) and Perestroika (1994)—winning seven Tony awards and the respect of generations. Despite these triumphs, the work also faced significant pushback. Due to its divisive themes, outrage was rampant in response to productions of Angels in America across the country, as well as against the script being read in schools.

In 1996, Charlotte Repertory Theatre’s production of Angels in America was met with protest from local citizens due to the play’s scenes of nudity, profanity, themes of homosexuality, and simulated sex. Protestors crowded outside the theater at each performance, holding up signs with phrases such as “Homosexuality is not art.” They also lobbied to local legislators, claiming that the production needed to be stopped as it broke a Charlotte city law banning public display of sexual organs to a member of the opposite sex. Pat McCrory, Charlotte’s mayor at the time, was in agreement, lobbying for the theater to “tone down” the play and change the sex scene, as well as demanding that the city attorney research the legality of full frontal nudity in a building supported by taxpayers. He urged Charlotte Repertory Theatre to “use some common sense” and alter the scene. “The Pulitzer Prize does not give you license to break the law,” he claimed. The scene in question featured Prior, a character with AIDS, disrobing so a nurse could inspect his

lesions. With this context in mind, Kushner and supporters of the play responded by explaining that the scene’s nudity is not only significant, but clinical in nature, rather than profane. Kushner refused to change what he’d written, as it was pivotal and authentic to the story. In accordance with the city law, the board of the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center (BPAC) threatened to evict Charlotte Rep if the nude scene were not changed.

The controversy in Charlotte over the play soon grew much larger than Charlotte Repertory Theatre’s production. The conflict drew massive media attention, creating a much larger conversation about funding the arts. Charlotte citizens of all viewpoints made their beliefs known in a variety of public forums, including churches, corporate environments, and city council and county commission meetings. Hours before the opening of the play, Judge Marvin K. Gray of the city's Superior Court ruled that the nude scene constituted "artistic expression, and is not properly the subject of criminal prosecution”; he issued

BlumentHal Performing arts Center in CHarlotte, nC.

a restraining order to prevent BPAC from evicting Charlotte Rep from the performance space. “It's only just now that I'm realizing what's been going on," said Steve Umberger, Charlotte Rep's artistic director, upon hearing the decision and reflecting on the importance of the freedom of artistic expression. "This battle has got to be fought for Charlotte to get to the next artistic level."

Even a year after the play closed, the issue of whether or not to support freedom of artistic expression continued in the Charlotte area. In 1997, one of the five majority Democrats on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners decided to side with Republicans on the issue of public funding of the arts. The individual, who said his religion taught him that homosexuality was a sin, voted with the Republicans to cut more than $2 million from the Arts & Science Council, which had financially supported Charlotte Rep’s production of Angels in America. Though once victorious in their legal battle, these cuts proved the fight was not over just yet. Furthermore, such fiscal factors ultimately contributed to Charlotte Rep’s closure in 2005. However, the theater’s goal to produce socially relevant art, even in the face of staunch opposition, has cemented it in the history of Angels in America for all time.

Protests of Angels in America were not limited to professional productions and also permeated educational theater. In 1999, Angels in America was produced by the Kilgore College’s Theatre Department in Kilgore, TX. Raymond Caldwell, the show’s director and theater department faculty member, expected controversy with the production given its subject matter. The department had done shows such as The Crucible, The Glass Menagerie, and Our Town, and he wanted to present something more topical and relevant to students. Furthermore, Caldwell felt that with a few cuts (making the sex scene only auditory, and removing the nude scene that had upset community members in Charlotte), the show was appropriate for college students. Despite these changes, Caldwell faced significant pushback, reporting to Playbill that he was shocked specifically at the level of personal attacks he received. Following the announcement

of the play, a local clergyman organized his congregation in opposition, and was soon joined by additional churches in solidarity. These churches included the incredibly large congregations of Heritage Baptist Church and God Said Ministry from Mount Enterprise, TX. Worried for his safety, the ACLU contacted Caldwell to notify and advise him regarding the involvement of Heritage Baptist Church, given their size and threat level. According to Caldwell, members picketed the show with graphic sexual images that were "worse than anything in the play itself.” In addition to the picketing, protestors sent death threats to Caldwell as well as the Kilgore College president, William Holda.

Similar to the situation in Charlotte, the conflict’s impact became much greater than a single production. Kilgore College had a partnership with the Texas Shakespeare Festival (TSF), a professional summer theater housed on its campus. The festival presents performances over a series of four weeks during late June and July, with five productions in repertory—two Shakespearean plays, a classic play, a musical, and a children's show. Caldwell himself had founded TSF, and it shared many staff members with Kilgore. As a result of the disapproval from the community toward Angels in America, county commissioners voted to rescind $50,000 in funding for the Texas Shakespeare Festival as a punishment to the two companies for not picking “appropriate” content for their audiences. President Holda responded with a statement, declaring “The image of the college

kilgore College in kilgore, tx.

has been enhanced with educators and people who champion artistic principles. But [...] we're a principal threat to the moral fiber of the community." The larger theatrical sphere was deeply dissatisfied with this result, with organizations such as PEN American Center/ Newman's Own and the Dramatists Guild of America providing additional funding for TSF to continue their programming.

Regardless of whether the play is produced, its content is still strong enough to ripple through a community and cause turmoil. At Temecula Valley High School in California, Angels in America caused controversy as required reading for high school students in 2023, accompanied by plays such as August Wilson’s Fences and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Parents claimed that drama instructor Greg Bailey never fully explained what the play was about, nor its sexual content. Bailey responded to a local news publication and claimed he did in fact forewarn that the play contained sexual situations and details about the AIDS epidemic. However, a local pastor Tim Thompson added that even if that were true, it was still inappropriate for students. Thompson’s public response can be further contextualized in his activities with the school board, where he was involved in helping elect at least five conservative members with deep ties to Christianity—with his goal being "to stop the indoctrination of children by placing candidates on school boards who will fight for Christian

and conservative values." In a period of nine months, such school board members banned the teaching of critical race theory, censored education about California's gay rights movement, fired the district superintendent, and sparked numerous protests among students. Furthermore, Thompson called for Bailey to be fired from the district, and Bailey was placed on administrative leave. In response, students and parents picketed at school board meetings, advocating for Bailey to remain part of the school faculty and for the importance of introducing students to socially relevant plays in schools. Bailey has maintained his position at Temecula Valley to this day, and is still directing the school’s theatrical productions. However, tension from community opposition toward the piece still lingers in the air, emphasizing how protests of the play continue to infringe on freedom of artistic expression even today.

College students in a ProduCtion of Angels in AmericA

temeCula Valley, California.

Watch:

Recommended Resources

by Editors

Where's My Roy Cohn, a documentary on Trump's relationship to Roy Cohn

RENT, by Jonathan Larson

Pose, by Ryan Murphy

Philadelphia, by Ron Nyswaner

United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, by Jim Hubbard

All the Beauty and Bloodshed, by Laura Poitras

How to Survive a Plague by David France

Read:

Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika

The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer

Love! Valor! Compassion! by Terrence McNally

Falsettos by William Finn

The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel

Illness as a Metaphor & AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sonta

Get Involved:

Frannie Peabody Center, peabodycenter.org

Equality Community Center, eccmaine.org

Equality Maine, equalitymaine.org

asHanti dwigHt williams and nate stePHenson in reHearsal for Angels in AmericA.

Portland Stage Company Education Programs

Student Matinee Series

The Portland Stage Student Matinee Program provides students with discounted tickets for student matinees. Following the performance, students participate in a conversation with the cast and crew, which helps them gain awareness of the creative process and encourages them to think critically about the themes and messages of the play.

Play Me a Story

Experience the fun and magic of theater on Saturday mornings with Play Me a Story! Ages 4 – 10 enjoy a performance of children’s stories followed by an interactive acting workshop with Portland Stage’s Education Artists for $15. Sign up for the month and save or pick individual days that work for you. Build literacy, encourage creativity and spark dramatic dreams!

Shakespeare Teen Company

In April and May of 2024, students will come together as an ensemble to create a fully-staged production of Shakespeare‘s Hamlet in Portland Stage’s studio theater. Participants in grades 7-12 take on a variety of roles including acting, costume design, marketing, and more!

Vacation and Summer Camps

Dive into theater for five exciting days while on your school breaks! Our theater camps immerse participants in all aspects of theater, culminating in an open studio performance for friends and family at the end of the week! Camps are taught by professional actors, directors, and artisans. Students are invited to think imaginatively, critically, and creatively in an environment of inclusivity and safe play.

PLAY Program

An interactive dramatic reading and acting workshop tour for elementary school students in grades pre-k through 5. Professional education artists perform children’s literature and poetry and then involve students directly in classroom workshops based on the stories. Artists actively engage students in in small group workshop using their bodies, voices, and imaginations to build understanding of the text while bringing the stories and characters to life. PLAY helps develop literacy and reading fluency, character recall, understanding of themes, social emotional skills, physical storytelling, and vocal characterization. The program also comes with a comprehensive Resource Guide filled with information and activities based on the books and poems.

Directors Lab

Professional actors perform a 50-minute adaptation of a Shakespeare play, followed by a talkback. In 2024 we will be touring Much Ado About Nothing to middle and high schools. After the performance, students engage directly with the text in an interactive workshop with the actors and creative team. In these workshops, students practice effective communication, creative collaboration, rhetoric, and critical analysis. The program also comes with a comprehensive Resource Guide filled with information and resources about the play we are focusing on. Directors Lab puts Shakespeare’s language into the hands and mouths of the students, empowering them to be the artists, directors, and ensemble with the power to interpret the text and produce meaning.

Portland Stage Company

Anita Stewart Artistic Director

Martin Lodish Managing Director

Artistic & Production Staff

Todd Brian Backus Literary Manager

Jacob Coombs Associate Technical Director

Ted Gallant Technical Director

Myles C. Hatch Stage Manager

Meg Lydon Stage Manager

Mary Lana Rice Production Manager & Lighting Supervisor

Seth Asa Sengel Asst. Production Manager & Sound Supervisor

Emily St. John Props Master

Susan Thomas Costume Shop Manager

Administrative Staff

Paul Ainsworth Business Manager

Isabel Bates Education Assistant

Beka Bryer Front of House Associate

Covey Crolius Development Director

Chris DeFilipp House Manager

Erin Elizabeth Marketing Director

Allison Fry Executive Assistant

James A. Hadley Assistant Marketing Director

Lindsey Higgins Development Associate

Jennifer London Company Manager

Renee Myhaver Assistant Box Office Manager

Donald Smith Audience Services Manager

Julianne Shea Education Administrator

Madeleine St. Germain Front of House Associate

Michael Dix Thomas Education Director

Adam Thibodeau House Manager

Apprentice Company

Katie Barnes Stage Management Apprentice

Ellis Collier Education Apprentice

Lucie Green Company Management Apprentice

Julia Jennings Directing & Dramaturgy Apprentice

Ellery Kenyon Education Apprentice

Isee Martine Scenic Design Apprentice

Claire Lowe Electrics Apprentice

Alex Oleksy Directing & Dramaturgy Apprentice

Elizabeth Sarsfield Stage Management Apprentice

Jessi Stier Directing & Dramaturgy Apprentice

Crow Traphagen Costumes Apprentice

Elena Truman Costumes Apprentice