Angels in America Part One by Tony Kushner

Okay, so the play that I read this week was Angels in America by Tony Kushner. I have been wanting to read this play for years and I am so happy that I finally did. I related to this play on a couple levels and it really spoke to me. I found this play very touching and one that I think everyone should read. I think it would really open peoples eyes to gay issues and the AIDS epidemic.

This play is about the lives of homosexuals in the time when AIDS was becoming a big issue. One of the couples portrayed was Prior and Louis. Prior had been hiding his sickness of AIDS from his longtime partner Louis, and when Prior eventually tells Louis about his sickness Louis gets scared and does what Prior was worrying about all along, leaves him. Joe, another character, is married to his wife, Harper, but has a secret that he has been hiding and feels ashamed of. Joe is a homosexual and eventually tells his wife, who gets upset and tells him to leave. Joe and Roy, an HIV positive man who sleeps with men but does not like labels and still considers himself heterosexual, meet through business and Roy needs help from Joe when his job is at stake, and even though Joe has developed feelings for Roy, he can't help him because of ethical issues. Part 1 ends with the sick Roy having a visit from his dark past come to haunt him. Joe and Louis, who is trying to figure out how he could have left Prior, meet up and discuss things that are going on and bond over some similarities. The play ends with Prior laying alone in his bed seeing an Angel descend upon him. This play touches on psychological effects brought on to a minority by discrimination. Also touched on labels and what labels actually mean. Makes the reader think about love and what love really is and just how complicated it can be. And finally it touches on how unexpected life is and that there is no way to run from something you are scared of. Eventually, you must face it and deal with it. You can't run away from something forever.

I found this play to be very moving and very relatable, especially for me on so many levels. I will now be reading Part 2 of Angels in America so be sure to keep checking back for when I talk about Part 2.

And like I usually do, I was able to find a monologue I liked and will post it here.

Roy:

"No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I f*** or who f***s me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. does this sound like me, Henry?"