..."America has rediscovered itself. Its Sacred Position among nations"- Tony Kushner Tony Kushner's play Angels in America was set in the 1980s, amid Ronald Reagan's administration. While some argue that, this play is political since we hear a significant amount about Reagan, others contend that his administration has largely been criticized for its negligence toward the AIDS crisis. This is not to say, that Angels in America is not political. On the contrary, numerous LGBT activists have blamed Reagan for overlooking the epidemic since it was thought to be for the most part a disease that primarily affected gay men and African Americans. Many Americans, specifically gay men, passed away before his presidency formally recognized the virus. It has become common today to dismiss after years of research, that globally we acknowledge AIDS is not a Gay disease. Most Scholars...
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...affect individuals and societies? In your answer, refer to your study and experience of TWO texts set for study. The Aristotelian definition of a Tragedy is a man of high estate who falls from grace in his attempts to defy a predetermined fate, and avoid their destiny/responsibility in order to maintain their hubristic lives. In the attempts to avoid his or her fates and responsibilities the protagonist plunges deeper into tragedy which eventually ends in the loss of himself and those around him, a sufferance he seemingly deserves from having tried to avoid his fate. Through the use dramatic techniques such as setting, chorus, lighting and movement this definition has manifested itself into my own personal adaptations of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus in order to portray the way fate and responsibility affect individuals and societies. Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles is a classic Aristotelian Tragedy about a man who sets out to find the killer of his father in order to set the people of Thebes free from famine and pain. Throughout the play Oedipus is given signs that it is he who has sinned against the gods, but he ignores these prophecies and tries to write his own fate which ultimately leads to his own demise. In order to stage this avoidance of fate I have chosen to use tiny LED lights embedded in the ceiling of the stage to represent the fact that Oedipus’s fate was always ‘written in the stars’ and cannot be avoided. Throughout my production...
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...Jonathan Arelt THE 200 10-24-14 Angles in America is an extraordinary play and movie, performed in 1993(Angles(2)) made in 2003 (Angles). Tony Kushner, who is the playwright, did a fantastic job on piecing it all together and making it such a well-known play in the theater sprectrum. The main idea of Kushner’s play was to show the struggles of being gay in America. People were learning more and more of AIDS and HIV and just how severe it is. The year is 1986 and it is cold October weather in New York. Louis Ironson and Prior Walter are lovers and Joe Pitt, a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals, and Harper Pitt are married. Roy Cohn is a well-connected lawyer that is good friends with Joe and his family. Prior finds out that he has AIDS and Louis cannot fathom the idea of losing his lover so when Prior has a traumatic fall and is rushed to the ER, Louis cannot stand it and ends up leaving him. Roy offers a Joe a job in D.C. with the Justice Department, however Harper does not want to leave her home in New York. The movie ends with Joe learning that Roy has a secret motive for Joe taking the job in D.C. Joe learns that he cannot hold back the feeling he has for men and gets into a relationship with Louis. Harper disappears in the fridge in her apartment and ends up at the South Pole. Prior is visit by an angle and is told that the coming is near. Joe tells Roy that he will not take the job in D.C. and Roy suffers a stress attack and starts to have strange visions. The play...
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