The Great Work Begins: Rituals
of Catharsis Towards a New Era
in Tony Kushner’s Angels in
America
Chrysoula Titi
In Angels in America Tony Kushner depicts an
apocalyptic world that is coming to an end. As the subtitle A
Gay Fantasia on National Themes states, it is a political drama that
explores politics on a national level and homosexuality in a
context permeated by religion. Kushner’s main preoccupation is
social criticism for a morally, spiritually and politically decaying
society heading towards destruction. 1 He discusses national
themes through those situated at the margins of this
disintegrating social construct and it is through them that he
presents us with hope for a different future. It is essentially a
revolution coming from the mental and physical illness of the
characters that pronounces a crisis which forces them to
challenge and reexamine the previous ontology and enables
them to become agents of themselves. Having suffered illness
and undergone internal transformation because of it, they reach
the stage of catharsis both individual and social, each character
in his or her own way, which leads to a new state of things. This
process of moving from illness to a redefinition of the world
through agency and revolution to a new era constitutes a ritual
of catharsis, the result of which is a new society that is by no
means innocent, perfect or even all-inclusive, but is in the
process of being formed by its founders. Angels in America
55
exemplifies the shift between a declining world towards a new
society achieved through the ritual of catharsis that reconciles
the problematic past with a new beginning which, however,
acknowledges the need for further struggle and efforts.
Dismantling a corrupted, self-destructive system is difficult but
creating and sustaining a new system is even more so.
Illness is a warning sign for the organism alerting it to
the fact that it is not functioning properly; it is a call for
measures to be taken so that a cure can be found in order for
the organism to survive. Societies operate much like an
organism; any problems among its members that impede their
communication and coexistence are like diseases that pronounce
the need for a cure. Naturally, no society is perfectly healthy as
there are always issues within large groups of people which, in
certain cases, reveal a deeper problem that leads to an overall
crisis. Angels in America is a portrayal of the 1980s society in the
United States and the troubling matters at the time–Reagan’s
conservative presidency, the rise of the New Right, the fight
against communism and the Cold War, the 1980s recession,
discrimination, racism, exclusion of minorities, the AIDS crisis
of the Reagan era that boosted homophobia and further
stigmatised homosexuality, to name just a few–all of which
constitute the backdrop of the play. The society Kushner
presents us with is a sick one, suffering from a combination of
diseases that exposes a general crisis which demands a solution
before the inevitable end.
The relationship between politics and sexuality is the
axis of Angels in America and this link is most clearly pronounced
by what Ramzi Fawaz calls the ‘digestive politics and poetics of
AIDS’ referring to the sustained use of tropes that associate the
actual physical experience of HIV/AIDS with a distaste for
American politics in its most racist and homophobic forms. 2
Similar language and images are used to describe both politics
and the body, which suggests that politics is inscribed on the
bodies of the characters. Roy Cohn, a lawyer who prides himself
in his political connections and his role in having Ethel
56
Rosenberg executed for espionage, best captures this parallel
exploration of corporeality and politics when he passionately
states that ‘this is gastric juices churning, this is enzymes and
acids, this is intestinal is what this is, bowel movement and
blood-red meat–this stinks, this is politics, Joe, the game of being
alive’. 3 This imagery is sustained throughout the play and is
extended to other characters, such as Joe and Louis, who also
suffer from gastric related disorders and whose political views
are contested. Interestingly enough, Fawaz suggests that these
political ideas–conservatism, racism, sexism, homophobia–are
an even worse affliction than the actual physical disorder. 4 This
association is one of Kushner’s techniques to shift the focus
from the stigmatised and marginalised AIDS patients to society
and the status quo that sustains their ‘larger systemic
dehumanization’. 5 The disease itself is not demonised nor does
it become the sole identifier of Prior and Roy; the focus is on
the socially constructed negative image of them as AIDS
patients, which ironically Roy has assimilated. Fawaz introduces
the term ill liberalism to describe an ‘alternative political
subjectivity’ whereby the individual is ‘materially contingent and
productively affected by external forces’ rather than an abstract,
disembodied subject. 6 This is exemplified in the face of Prior
Walter, the prophet of the new world after the millennium,
whose corporeality is not only diligently depicted but also
celebrated as opposed to the many non-material angelic and
ghostly presences, like the Angel and Ethel. The same applies to
the other male characters as well whose illness attests to their
physical presence.
For every disease we seek a cure and this is in a way the
aim of Angels in America, to find a remedy for the characters and
their world even though it is not possible because a cure seems
impossible to find. This affliction is on one level, AIDS, and on
a deeper level, the corrupt sociopolitical context that demonises,
excludes, and discriminates against anyone related to AIDS. Of
course, there is no cure or treatment for either, but still there is a
need for some sort of spiritual cleansing; since there is no cure
57
for the body, the characters seek for alleviation, soothing and
relief for the soul, in other words catharsis. The term was
originally used in ancient Greece by Aristotle to explain what
effect art, and particularly tragedy as a form of drama, has on
the spectator. Tragedy for Aristotle is:
an imitation of an action that is serious, complete,
and of a certain magnitude; in language
embellished with each kind of artistic ornament,
the several kinds being found in separate parts of
the play; in the form of action, not of narrative;
through pity and fear effecting the proper
purgation of these emotions. 7
Viewing human suffering on stage evokes a purification of
negative emotions such as fear, pity and anger, which lead to
renewal and restoration, a sort of regeneration of the spirit that
leaves the spectator hopeful and not dispirited or down-hearted
after the performance. Tragedies present the fall of a great and
worthy character caused by hamartia, the fatal flaw that leads to
the downfall of the tragic hero or heroine. In many ways, Angels
in America is a tragedy because we follow a set of characters
along their journey to deal with their misfortunes which have no
solution or ending–by the end of the play at least–and yet we are
offered cleansing, revitalisation and hope to carry on and so are
the characters. It can be argued, however, that Kushner
approaches the characters in his play differently because he
presents us with simple, everyday people who face their
hardships and not with exceptional people, as is the case with
ancient Greek tragedies.
Religion, much like art, has a cathartic effect and its
main function, as is generally accepted, is to comfort and give
hope as a sort of antidote to reality. In Kushner’s play catharsis
can be seen in the light of both drama, because of its similarities
to tragedy, and religion, because of the heavy apocalyptic
references. The very first word of the title is Angels and the first
part of the play is subtitled Millennium Approaches both of which
58
have primarily religious overtones. Aside from the romantic plot
concerning the couples and their relationship, the main plot is
religious and political. The focus is Prior and his struggle not
only with AIDS but also with his being ordained a prophet by
the Angel and having to decide whether to accept that role or
not. Kushner relies extensively on a religious context of Judaism
and Mormonism in order to challenge it and introduce an
alternative understanding of it. All the characters are faced with
a religious dilemma of sorts, and come to question their own
beliefs. Each has a different and complex religious, political and
ethnic background, consistent with Kushner’s idea of a diverse
redeemed American community which is still quite problematic
because of certain exclusions, as will be discussed later on; Louis
is Jewish with ambiguous political sympathies, Prior is AngloSaxon with no clearly stated religious or political sympathies, Joe
is Mormon and Republican, Roy is McCarthyist and atheist,
Hannah and Harper are heterosexual, Mormons with no
particular political beliefs, and Belize is a former drag queen,
most likely African American as is implied in the play, with
liberal political sympathies. These differences are reflected in the
way they interact with each other, when, for instance, Louis and
Joe strive to reconcile their diametrically different world views.
Religious images and connotations are skillfully interwoven in
the plot so that we have images of Heaven and Hell compared
to San Francisco and New York, respectively, and the most
important reoccurring image of the Bethesda Fountain in
Central Park with which the play ends. Kushner presents us with
a precarious religious context since it actually signifies the
‘absence rather than the presence of God’. 8 Despite the complex
religious issues raised, divine presence is absent; we are only
given angels as the ‘incredibly powerful bureaucrats’ who not
only fail to respond to the needs of the characters but are even
more lost and helpless than humans, being ‘sort of fabulous and
dull all at once’. 9 For instance, in Act Two, Scene One, the
Angel appears at Prior’s house to reveal to him the prophesy
book that should have come to him in a dream but did not
because of the angels’ disorganisation, thus drawing them
59
comically as inexperienced functionaries after God abandoned
them. The absence of authority takes on political implications as
well because it is the people, now liberated from ‘the grip of the
Law of the Father/Creator’, who have to govern themselves. 10
This is the new sort of religion that is presented in the play
according to which ‘human beings are encouraged to find
strength and healing in themselves and each other, transcending
and disrupting prescribed, 'proper' identities, and the Symbolic
Law of the absent Father’. 11
The central religious image in the play is that of the
angel which also has political resonances. The use of the angel
imagery is not a novelty in itself but what Angels in America most
clearly exemplifies is the ambiguous nature of the angels,
imagined both as ‘fiery, powerful beings that evoked the might
of God’ and as ‘largely benign, blonde, winged young people’ 12,
and their corporeality which has been the cause of many
religious debates. According to Amy Schindler, over the past
few years the second image is favoured in American popular
culture, which she attributes to social change that generates new
needs. Even this prevalent image of the angel is subverted in the
play, since the angel appears as a woman with ‘eight vaginas’ and
‘Hermaphroditically Equipped as well with a Bouquet of
Phalli’ 13, far from the innocent, pure and desexualised popular
conception of angels. This is part of the play’s politics to
humanise angels by attributing corporeality to them so that, by
worshiping angels, one is actually worshiping oneself, the
adoration of the human in the figure of the divine instead of the
abstract idea of God. The main function of angels in the play is
to offer a ‘non-judgmental spirituality’ that will comfort the
‘people who feel stigmatized or judged as a result of the AIDS
epidemic’. 14 Indeed there is no judgment towards the characters
who, under other circumstances, would be social pariahs. There
is no God to judge them, and even if there were, it would not
matter because ‘the mighty creator Himself is judged wanting by
humankind’. 15
60
The world presented in Angels in America is in a limbolike state, undergoing a transition in the wake of the
approaching millennium. In line with the religious context
discussed so far, Claudia Barnett suggests that the ‘liminal
“space” of AIDS functions as a metaphor for Purgatory
throughout the play’ 16, the intermediate state after death where
one is neither in Heaven nor Hell but in the process of
purification through suffering as a preparation for Heaven. The
term is also used to characterise any place or condition of
temporary suffering or torment which will, however, lead to a
better situation. The play introduces a magical world as the
subtitle states, a “fantasia”, which includes ghosts, angels,
visions and prophesies that only Prior and Roy can see as the
only two characters suffering from AIDS. Roy’s death appears
to be a result of his own moral decay and spiritual depletion
rather than the disease per se, while Prior’s survival seems to be
the result of this very disease, meaning that Kushner presents us
with a ‘positive pole of Purgatory, a space of possibilities, not
devoid of hope’. 17 The suffering of all the characters is part of
their journey towards a new and hopeful era, according to
Prior’s prophesy that ‘AIDS must not equal death’ even though
at the time it actually did. 18 This prophesy is based on the notion
of fairness and justice but, as the play itself proves, life is not fair
so the ‘trick is to overcome injustice, and Prior is the hero
because he does that’. 19 The “fantasia” in Angels in America is
not perfect and, upon closer examination, barely a magical world
because of its self-consciousness and the explicit theatricality
expressed in the stage directions. Kushner clearly states in the
Playwright’s Notes that:
The moments of magic […] are to be fully realised,
as bits of wonderful theatrical illusion—which
means it’s OK if the wires show, and maybe it’s
good that they do, but the magic should at the
same time be thoroughly amazing. 20
Following Brechtian alienation or distancing effect, the play is to
be directed in such a way that it becomes obvious it is a play,
61
meaning that the audience is not to relate to the action or the
characters but maintain an objective distance; this is why the
magical scenes are to be performed as illusions, not magic, and
the actors are to play multiple roles in order to carry out the
play’s self-reflexivity. This approach serves the play’s objective
to make the audience aware of its political message and the fact
that, just as no on-stage fantasia is perfect, similarly no society is
perfect, therefore requiring constant vigilance, effort and action
for its improvement.
Building on the religious imagery and connotations of
the play, we can situate the characters in this transitional state
undergoing their version of purgatory to reach their catharsis.
Each character is faced with different challenges in his or her
quest for meaning and deliverance from their affliction. We are
presented with a world in crisis permeated by disease, mental
and physical, which forces characters to reconsider not only
their world but their very existence. Prior and Roy are suffering
from AIDS and are questioning their sanity because of their
supernatural experiences with angels and ghosts respectively.
Louis and Joe have minor health problems associated with their
mental state and decisions regarding their partners and their
ideology as a whole. Harper is on the verge of a mental
breakdown and Hannah undergoes a radical change of character.
Belize seems to be the only stable point of reference in the play
performing the role of the caretaker or even the priest, but he
too faces his demons in the face of Roy. By the end of the play
each of them, apart from Roy, survives their purgatory and
achieves catharsis but without entirely resolving the issue at
hand: the general underlying condition of society. They only
manage to recognise the problems, come to terms with their
past and present, and be hopeful about the future they will try to
build. They assume the role of founders of a different, albeit not
perfect, society promising that the ‘Great Work Begins’. 21 The
process that each of the characters undergoes to reach that
catharsis from illness to a reconstruction of the world that
introduces a new era will be referred to as a ritual of catharsis. In
62
other words, this term signifies the ritual they go through from
disease to catharsis of the self and of their community.
Kushner examines his characters in pairs and actually
presents them onstage as such in the many parallel scenes, what
he refers to in his stage directions as a ‘split scene’. 22 It is not
only a spatial pairing of characters but also a symbolic one,
according to Natalie Meisner 23, which goes back to the play’s
binary
oppositions,
for
instance
male/female,
heterosexuality/homosexuality, Heaven/Hell, progress/stasis,
healthy/sick, life/death, as pointed out by David Savran. 24 This
pairing brings together the characters by virtue of what they
share but at the same time separates them because they are set
up from the start as opposites. Prior and Harper are one such
pair that share some common elements but are ultimately
physically set apart by the end of the play despite being the ones
who are most clearly connected as they even share the same
dreams. They are both abandoned by their partners for similar
reasons, their physical and mental illnesses respectively, and yet
they manage to comfort one another in those mutual dreams by
revealing something hopeful about each other in that ‘threshold
of revelation’. 25 In spite of this solidarity and their analogous
situations, their rituals of catharsis lead them in different
directions. Prior learns to live with AIDS and becomes the
prophet of the outcasts finally reaching his catharsis in the
Bethesda Fountain scene while Harper moves to San Francisco,
paralleled to Heaven, as a new, self-determined person. The
Fountain becomes the central image of the play and a symbol of
healing as it refers to the angel Bethesda whose feet touched the
earth and ‘a fountain shot up from the ground’, the waters of
which could cure those ‘suffering, in the body or the spirit’. 26
The individual actions of Prior and Harper throughout the play
gave them self-consciousness which liberated them from what
was holding them back. It would be interesting to ask, though,
why Harper–as the only heterosexual character left–is excluded
from that last Bethesda scene; this has generated criticism
63
regarding women’s position in the new world heralded by Prior,
as it will be discussed further on.
Another coupling that reflects the pair of Prior and
Harper is Louis and Joe who find themselves in similar
circumstances having to abandon their partners because of their
health problems. Prior suffers from AIDS and Louis is unable
to ‘incorporate sickness into his sense of how things are
supposed to go’ 27, and Harper suffers from severe depression
and Valium addiction which, combined with Joe’s repressed
homosexual desire, finally results in Joe starting an affair with
Louis. They are both driven by guilt for deserting their partners
when they most needed them so their actions throughout the
play portray an inner struggle between their responsibilities
towards Prior and Harper, and their ‘shared selfishness, their
willingness to dispose of the past and look only to a new,
radically changed, future’. 28 As Stephanie Byttebier puts it, Louis
and Joe ‘represent a whole class of onlookers of pain who are
invested in obscuring or even removing their actual, individual
presence in the face of suffering’ 29 , which explains why they
abandon their loved ones at a time of great need. Louis is ‘afraid
of the crimes [he] may commit’ 30 and indeed he does commit
them but he is not able to live with them as Joe seems to be.
They both suffer from nightmares triggered by guilt and fear
that they are terrible people but Louis is the only one who
admits to these concerns. Joe recognises that ‘you and I,
fundamentally, we’re the same. We both want the same things’ 31
and that is forgiveness. Neither of them can wholeheartedly
commit to this new relationship because of their guilt which
keeps them tied to their previous partners who embody their
unattainable catharsis. Prior admits to still loving Louis, but
makes clear that he cannot take him back, while Harper rejects
Joe telling him to ‘get lost’ and ‘go exploring’. 32 This is the last
we see of Joe who does not achieve catharsis as opposed to
Louis who finds another way to redeem himself by being part of
the great work that is announced at the Bethesda Fountain.
64
Belize seems to be the only character that is not paired
with another because he relates to all of them in a way. As
Prior’s ex-partner, he is naturally closer to Prior supporting him
in this difficult time having to deal with AIDS and Louis’s
abandonment. He takes care of Prior, becomes his personal
nurse, and tends to his emotional needs for friendship and
companionship. By virtue of his profession as a nurse he treats
the sick, even Roy, the rigorous McCarthyist and closeted
homosexual who embodies aggressive individualism, racism and
homophobia. Even more so that the rest, as a ‘black, gay ex-drag
queen turned nurse’ 33 , Belize resists traditional classifications
and so moves on the edges of a marginal community. Yet he is
the most important character because, unlike the ambivalent
Louis, he is certain about his beliefs which project a realistic
image of society’s outcasts. He embodies the complicated
relationship between ‘histories of racial violence, AIDS, and the
state’s simultaneous aversion to, and erotic courting of, the very
abject (often queer) bodies it destroys’ 34, that of homosexuals.
What is admirable about Belize according to Byttebier is that,
despite his professional obligation as a nurse, he is capable of
not only performing his duties but also of showing remarkable
kindness to Roy by helping him with his drug trials and by
getting Louis to pray for him after just having died in the
hospital room. 35 He is even sympathetic and helpful towards
Louis when the latter is not babbling about his ‘Big Ideas’ and
his love for America which Belize questions because ‘it’s just big
ideas, and stories, and people dying’, ‘terminal, crazy and
mean’. 36 Belize is not seeking catharsis the same way Prior,
Harper, Louis and Joe are for the simple reason that he has
nothing to feel guilty about or to admit about himself. The kind
of catharsis he achieves comes from showing solidarity to Prior
and Roy, by taking care of them, and attempting to understand
Louis. He reaches his catharsis as he is one of the new world
founders heralded by Prior.
In the diseased world of Angels in America there is a clear
distinction between the new and the old world exemplified by
65
the imminent apocalypse announced in the play and by the
characters. Hannah and Roy stand for the old world order and
embody “traditional” backward ideologies such as homophobia,
racism and intolerance as opposed to Prior, Louis, Harper, Joe
and Belize who call into question that ideology and strive for an
alternative, just, and more inclusive society. Hannah is the one
present in the Bethesda Fountain where Prior gives his blessing
of ‘More Life’ to all the ‘fabulous creatures’ around the Fountain
and in the audience as well. 37 Nevertheless, as Nutu has
remarked, Hannah is transformed by the end of the play; she has
come to terms with her son, Joe, being a homosexual and there
are even suggestions that she might be a lesbian 38 which makes
her part of the ‘idyllic new world of gay erotic affiliation’ 39 along
with Prior, Louis and Belize. She admits that for her ‘men in any
configuration … well they’re so lumpish and stupid. And stupid
gets me cross’ 40 and she has an ‘enormous orgasm as the [female]
Angel flies away’ 41 after her struggle with Prior. By accepting her
son and becoming a sort of mother figure for Prior she finds her
catharsis, purifies herself from her past and can now build the
future. She becomes a symbol of how the old world can change
for the better, meaning that it can be improved and not
completely rejected. Roy, by contrast, represents the exact
opposite, how impossible it is for the previous status quo to
change. He is the only character who does not develop
throughout the play but remains faithful to his problematic
ideology. In fact, his story is circular as his last scene repeats his
first so that the same image and diction used to introduce Roy is
also used in the scene of his death:
(Hitting a button): Hold. (To Joe) I wish I was an
octopus, a fucking octopus. Eight loving arms and
all those suckers.42 Next time around: I don’t want
to be a man. I wanna be an octopus. Remember
that, OK? A fucking … (Punching an imaginary
button with his finger) Hold. (He dies) 43
Roy is not searching for catharsis nor does he repent his actions
or life and yet ‘in dying he is forgiven’ as Louis and Ethel
66
Rosenberg, his nemesis, pray for him. 44 This exclusion again
raises questions about exactly how all-inclusive and progressive
this new world really is if there is only place for queer
individuals like Prior, Louis and Belize and radically “queered”
women such as Hannah.
Despite being celebrated for ‘queering the nation’ 45 ,
Angels in America has been criticised for its representation of
women and the explicit masculine-feminine binary it seems to
uphold. Hannah and Harper do eventually take control of their
lives and become agents of themselves, but they are still situated
in a play that replicates the all too familiar social structures that
recognise women as Other. As Savran highlights, Harper is
pathologised throughout the entire play and Hannah assumes
the role of the caretaker commonly associated with maternity
and femininity. 46 It is Hannah as the maternal figure, and
potentially a lesbian, who remains in the end to care for the rest,
willing to ‘personally take him [Prior] there to bathe’ 47, and not
Harper, the heterosexual woman who seeks personal fulfillment.
Even the queer relationships portrayed ultimately fail because
the couples do not survive the crisis so ‘the romantic dyad (as a
primary social unit) is replaced in the final scene of Perestroika by
a utopian concept of (erotic) affiliation and a new definition of
family’. 48 We are left in the end at the highly symbolic Bethesda
Fountain which is a promise of hope, cleansing and life for the
four remaining characters who are to begin the great work of
rebuilding the world. But the issues discussed so far call into
question whether such a world of tolerance, where the social
pariahs ‘will be citizens’, can actually exist. 49 Interestingly
enough, it is Harper, the one excluded from the final Bethesda
scene, who expresses the ‘kind of painful progress’ 50 of the new
world heralded. The fact that she communicates such an
important message can be interpreted as her finally coming to
terms with the difficult reality and recognising the need to move
forward, as Prior does at the end. The Angel also attests to this
inevitable painful progress of the world and the contradictory
ideas of history, progress and paradise that Walter Benjamin’s
67
angel of history stands for 51 , representing ‘both the
inconceivability of progress and the excruciating condition of
the Now’. 52 The angel is a harbinger of the history that is ‘about
to crack wide open’ 53 which will affect both those present and
absent at the last quasi-utopian scene.
Angels in America is a subversive play that challenges and
exemplifies the transitional stage of a declining world shifting
towards a new era. Through the rituals of catharsis the
characters undergo, it seeks to reconcile the problematic past
with a hopeful future but it is necessary to acknowledge that
further struggle and efforts are required. Dismantling a
corrupted social system is no easy task but it can be equally, or
even more, challenging to create and sustain a new social
system. The new community we are left with at the end of the
play is by no means a perfect one as there are still issues that
need to be addressed. Nonetheless, the most important thing
that Kushner attests to is the agency each and every one of us
needs to assume and our duty to take action for this new era to
come. As Peter Cohen remarks, the play is a ‘call for activism’
that, by the end of it, asks the audience to continue what was
performed onstage so that everyone will become an agent of
change. 54 Breaking the forth wall, Prior directly addresses the
audience and asks for their participation in the great work that
begins with the end of the play. Kushner assumes the same role
as Prior does, demonstrating that ‘the process of social change
he envisions is not an imaginative process, but rather one that
can only 'begin' once the play itself has ended’. 55
Notes
1 Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National
Themes. Part One: Millennium Approaches (New York: Theatre
Communications Group, 1993). p. 119.
68
2 Ramzi Fawaz, ‘“I Cherish My Bile Duct as Much as Any Other
Organ”: Political Disgust and the Digestive Life of AIDS in
Tony Kushner’s Angels in America’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and
Gay Studies, 21.1 (January 2015), 121-152 (p. 122).
3
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 68.
4
Fawaz, pp. 121-122.
5
Ibid., p. 129.
6
Ibid., p. 132.
Aristotle, Poetics, trans. by S. H. Butcher. Project Gutenberg, 3
November 2008
<https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1974/1974-h/1974-h.htm>
[Date accessed 09/07/2015] (n.p.).
7
Ela Nutu, ‘Angels in America and Semiotic Cocktails of Sex,
Bible and Politics’, Biblical Interpretation, 14.1 (2006), 175-186 (p.
181).
8
9 Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National
Themes. Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre
Communications Group, 1993). p. 49.
10 Nutu,
11
p. 181.
Ibid., p. 186.
Amy Schindler, ‘Angels and the AIDS Epidemic: The
Resurgent Popularity of Angel Imagery in the United States of
America’, Journal of American Culture, 22.3 (Fall 1999), 49-61 (p.
51).
12
13
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 48.
14
Schindler, p. 59.
15
Ibid., p. 58.
69
Claudia Barnett, ‘AIDS = Purgatory: Prior Walter’s Prophecy
and Angels in America’, Modern Drama, 53.4 (Winter 2010), 471494 (p. 472).
16
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., p. 479.
19
Ibid., p. 489.
20
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 5.
21
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 148.
22
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 22.
Natalie Meisner, ‘Messing with the Idyllic: The Performance
of Femininity in Kushner’s Angels in America’, The Yale Journal of
Criticism, 16.1 (Spring 2003), 177-189 (p. 181).
23
David Savran, ‘Ambivalence, Utopia, and a Queer Sort of
Materialism: How Angels in America Reconstructs the Nation’,
Theatre Journal, 47.2 Gay and Lesbian Queeries (May 1995), 207-227
(p. 212).
24
25
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 33.
26
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 147.
27
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 25.
28
Nutu, p.180.
Stephanie Byttebier, ‘“It Doesn’t Count If It’s Easy”: Facing
Pain, Mediating Identity in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America’,
Modern Drama, 54.3 (Fall 2011), 287-309 (p. 298).
29
30
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 25.
31
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 73.
32
Ibid., p. 143.
33
Fawaz, p. 122.
70
34
Ibid.
35
Byttebier, pp. 306-7.
36
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 96.
37
Ibid., p. 148.
38
Nutu, pp. 182-3.
39
Meisner, p. 177.
40
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 104.
41
Ibid., p. 120.
42
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 11.
43
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 115.
44
Nutu, p. 182.
45
Savran, p. 217.
46
Ibid., p. 215.
47
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 147.
48
Savran, p. 209.
49
Kushner, Angels in America, Perestroika, p. 148.
50
Ibid., p. 144.
51
Savran, p. 211.
52
Ibid., p. 210.
53
Kushner, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, p. 112.
54 Peter F. Cohen, ‘Strange Bedfellows: Writing Love and
Politics in Angels in America and The Normal Heart’, Journal of
Medical Humanities, 19.2-3 (1998), 197-219 (p. 215).
55
Ibid.
71