Educator's Learning Guide

-Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches was written and workshopped by Tony Kushner in 1989-1990. It premiered in 1991, but was published in 1992. It carries a cast of 21 characters for five men and three females to be casted.

-The story turns on October-November 1985-January 1986 in New York City. Also events in Salt Lake City, Moscow, Russia. Being in a airliner flying to San Francisco, along with others being Heaven, Hell, dream sequences and places imagined by the characters. focuses on the stories of two troubled couples, one gay, one straight: "word processor" Louis Ironson terms and his lover Prior Walter and Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt and his wife Harper. After the funeral of Louis's grandmother, Prior tells him that he has contracted AIDS, and Louis panics. He tries to care for Prior but soon realizes he cannot stand the strain and fear. Meanwhile, Joe is offered a job in the Justice Department by Roy Cohn: his right-wing, bigoted mentor and friend. But the trouble is Harper, who is addicted to Valium and suffers anxiety and hallucinations, does not want to move to Washington. The two couples' fates quickly become intertwined: Joe stumbles upon Louis crying in the bathroom of the courthouse where he works, and they strike up an unlikely friendship based in part on Louis's suspicion that Joe is gay. Harper and Prior also meet, in a fantastical mutual dream sequence in which Prior, operating on the "threshold of revelation," reveals to Harper that her husband is a closeted homosexual. Harper confronts Joe, who denies it but says he has struggled inwardly with the issue. Roy receives a different kind of surprise: At an appointment with his doctor Henry, he learns that he too has been diagnosed with AIDS. But Roy, who considers gay men weak and ineffectual, thunders that he has nothing in common with them-AIDS is a disease of homosexuals, whereas he has "liver cancer." Henry, disgusted, as he urges him to use his clout to obtain an experimental AIDS drug. Later back on earth, his fever broken, Prior tells Louis he loves him but that he cannot come back for him. Harper leaves Joe for the last time and sets off on an optimistic voyage to San Francisco to begin her own life. Prior says that the disease has killed many but that he intends to live on, and that the "Great Work" will continue.
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-Brief Bio of the Author- Tony Kushner was born in Manhattan, New York in July 16, 1956, where he would later move to Louisiana. He settled and grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana where his family moved after inheriting a lumber business. He earned a bachelors degree from Columbia University and later did postgraduate work at New York University. In the early 1980s, he founded a theater group and began writing and producing plays. In the early 1990s, he scored a monster hit with the epic, seven-hour, two-part, Broadway blockbuster Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes which earned for Kushner a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Evening Standard Award, two Olivier Award Nominations, the New York Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the LAMBDA Liberty Award for Drama. His work has been produced and seen at the Mark Taper Forum, the New York Shakespeare Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Hartford Stage Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center as well as theatres in over 30 countries across the globe. He was the recipient of a 1990 Whiting Foundation Writers Award and playwriting and directing fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Kushner is currently a faculty member of New York University's Dramatic Writing program.
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A look of the Characters

Louis Ironson - Male, Jewish, in his mid 20s to thirties A "word processor" who works at the federal appeals court in Brooklyn. Louis embodies all the stereotypes of the neurotic Jew: anxious, ambivalent and perpetually guilty.

Prior Walter - Male, White, in his 30s. The boyfriend Louis abandons after Prior reveals that he has AIDS. Prior becomes a prophet when he is visited by an Angel of God, but he eventually rejects his prophecy and demands a blessing of additional life.

Joe Pitt - Male, in his 30s A Mormon, Republican lawyer at the appeals court, Joe grapples with his latent homosexuality, leaving his wife Harper for Louis and being left in turn by Louis.

Harper Pitt - Female, white, in her thirties Joe's wife, a Valium-addicted agoraphobe trapped in a failing marriage who hallucinates and invents imaginary characters to escape her troubles. The perpetually fearful Harper obsesses about knife-wielding men and the ozone layer as a subconscious stand-in for her own difficulties.

Roy Cohn - Male in his 50s, A famous New York lawyer and powerbroker, Roy Cohn was a real-life figure whom Kushner adapted for his play. Roy is the play's most vicious and disturbing character, a closeted homosexual who disavows other gays and cares only about amassing clout. His lack of ethics led him to illegally intervene in the espionage trial of Ethel Rosenberg, which resulted in her execution. Roy represents the opposite of community, the selfishness and loneliness all too endemic to American life. However, his malevolence goes beyond mere isolation to actual hatred and evil. He is forgiven (though not exonerated) in the play's moral climax, after his death (from AIDS) unwittingly reconnects him to the gay community from which he always distanced himself.

Belize - Male, A black ex-drag queen and registered nurse, Belize is Prior's best friend and-quite against Belize's will-Roy's caretaker. He is the most ethical and reasonable character in the play, generously looking out for Prior, grappling with Roy and rebutting Louis's blindly self-centered politics.

Hannah Pitt - Female, Joe's mother, who moves from Salt Lake City to New York after Joe confesses he is gay in a late-night phone call. Hannah tends sternly to Harper but blossoms after she encounters Prior, becoming his companion and friend. Her chilly demeanor is melted by Prior and by a remarkable sexual encounter with the Angel.

The Angel of America - Female, An imposing, terrifying, divine presence who descends from Heaven to bestow prophecy on Prior. The Angel seeks a prophet to overturn the migratory impulse of human beings, believing that their constant motion and change have driven God to abandon creation. Her cosmology is disturbingly reactionary, even deadly, and Prior successfully resists it in a visit to Heaven. This reactionary nature is rather surprisingly blended with a dramatic, Whitman-esque speaking style and an overpowering, multigendered sexuality.

Ethel Rosenberg - Female, A real-life Jewish woman who was executed for treason during the McCarthy era. The Ethel of the play returns as a ghost to take satisfaction in the death of her persecutor, Roy. Ethel hates Roy with a "needlesharp" passion, yet on his deathbed she musters enough compassion to sing to him

Mr. Lies - Male, A travel agent who resembles a jazz musician, Mr. Lies is one of Harper's imaginary creations.

Henry - Female, Roy's doctor, whom Roy threatens with destruction lest he refer to him as a homosexual.

Emily - Female, A nurse who attends to Prior in the hospital. Emily is one of several characters who give voice to the same anti-migratory impulse as the Angel, she tells Prior in no uncertain terms to stay put.

Martin Heller - Male, A Justice Department official and political ally of Roy's. Martin is fundamentally spineless, allowing Roy to manipulate him in order to impress Joe and then taking the abuse that Roy heaps on him along with a blackmail threat.

Sister Ella Chapter - Female, A real estate agent who handles the sale of Hannah's house in Salt Lake. Like Emily, she urges her friend to settle down and remain at home

Prior I and Prior II - Males, Prior's ancestors who are summoned from the dead to help prepare the way for the Angel's arrival. Prior I is a medieval farmer, Prior II a seventeenth- century Londoner who is more sophisticated and cosmopolitan in outlook. Both men died of the plague.

Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz- Female, an orthodox Jewish rabbi.

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