2 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
informing the angelic Continental Principalities, “We can’t just stop. We’re
not rocks—progress, migration, motion is... modernity. It’s animate, it’s what
living things do. We desire.”
The epilogue to Perestroika (and to Angels in America as a whole), set four
years later in early 1990, marks significant changes. International evidence
includes the fall of the Berlin Wall, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War. On
the personal level, Prior has lived with AIDS for five years (likely benefiting from
Roy Cohn’s unused AZT pills—purloined and presented to Prior by a friend). To
society at large he proclaims that he and others with the disease “are not going
away” and “won’t die secret deaths anymore. The World only spins forward. We
will be citizens.... The Great Work Begins.” Many of Kushner’s plays, Angels in
America among them, deal unflinchingly with suffering, loss, and death, but hope,
as a complementary theme to change, regularly lightens those works. Prior asserts,
“We live past hope.”
In 1994 Kushner wrote Slavs! Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of
Virtue and Happiness, which he called a “coda” to Angels in America. The ninety-
minute play, crafted largely from material not used in Perestroika and covering the
period 1985 to 1992, explores the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath.
Since then Kushner has written such works as Homebody/Kabul (1999; revised,
2004), a four-hour political drama on Afghanistan; the book and lyrics for Caro-
line, or Change (2002), a semi-autobiographical musical; and the play The Intel-
ligent Homosexual ’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures
(2009).
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH
- Kushner has frequently acknowledged the significance of Bertolt Brecht’s
plays and dramatic theories in his development as a playwright. To measure
the extent of Brecht’s influence on Angels in America and its coda, Slavs! ,
students could first read one or more of his major plays, such as Mother
Courage and Her Children (translated, 1966), The Good Person of Setzuan
(translated, 1993), and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (translated, 1948), as well
as his theories on epic theater, political theater, and the “alienation effect.”
Then students could compare and contrast the chosen Brechtian play(s)
and theories with relevant examples from Kushner’s plays. Helpful sources
include Brecht on Theatre, edited and translated by John Willett (New York:
Hill & Wang, 1964); and two essays in the volume edited by Deborah R.
Geis and Steven F. Kruger—Janelle Reinelt, “Notes on Angels in America as
American Epic Theatre,” pp. 234–244, and Art Borreca, “‘Dramaturging’
the Dialectic: Brecht, Benjamin, and Declan Donnellan’s Production of
Angels in America,” pp. 245–260. - In light of political references in Angels in America, students might research
history of the spread and treatment of AIDS in the United States since the
discovery of the disease in the early 1980s. A useful starting place is Randy
Shilts’s And the Band Played On (1987).