Was American drama and the discourse surrounding it significantly altered by the arrival of Angels in America?
Like the “very Steven Spielberg” angel that crashes through Prior’s ceiling at the end of Millennium Approaches, Kushner’s epic drama landed on Broadway a decade ago and tore, thrillingly and irreparably, through the limited notions of art and public discourse that had constrained American drama for so long. (Of course, Angels in America is in no other way even a tiny little bit Steven Spielberg; the Hollywood honcho thrives on sentimentality, manipulativeness and transporting special effects, while Kushner’s work is driven by ambivalent empathy, moral complexity and illusion, both spectacular and unmasked.) Revolutionary in its sweep, style and substance, Angels expanded the canvas of our theatre, interconnecting the politics of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and religion in a deeply literary, highly theatrical, materialist and spiritual critique of America at the turn of the century. Placing even the most domestic of scenes within psycho-sexual-political landscapes, Kushne
