Angels in America

About Angels in America

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. The two parts of the play are separately presentable and entitled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, respectively. The play has been made into a television miniseries and an opera.

The play is a complex examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. The play’s first part, Millennium Approaches, was commissioned by the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco, by Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone. The play’s second part, Perestroika, was still being developed as Millennium Approaches was being performed. It was performed several times as staged readings by both the Eureka Theatre (during the world premiere of part one in 1991), and the Mark Taper Forum (in May 1992). It received its world premiere in November 1992 in a production by the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone.

The entire two-part play debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993, directed by George C. Wolfe, with Millennium Approaches performed on May 4 and Perestroika joining it in repertory on November 23, closing December 4, 1994 featuring Ron Leibman, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Wright, and Joe Mantello.