ANGELS IN AMERICA: Millennium Approaches opened last night!  It was a really wonderful performance with a full house of receptive and excited audience members.

We wanted to share some of the early photos from the production taken by the wonderful and talented Melissa Blackall.  Enjoy!

Jim Jorgensen as ROY COHN

Karl Miller as PRIOR WALTER and Alexander Strain as LOUIS IRONSON

Daniel Eichner as JOE PITT and Casie Platt as HARPER PITT

Okay.  I was taking my time to craft a beautifully-thought-out, well-written entry about the relevance of Angels in America in today’s society in response to Peter Marks’ comment in his article that we would be faced with “reinvigorating a scalding political drama in a city in which the politics have changed.”  I had written a great lead-in quoting Trey’s article in the City Paper in which he said, “if this capital city has ever needed a reminder of what humanity means in the great sweep of the history we make here—it’s now.”  It was going to be fully-formed paragraphs, but then I switched over to another screen to update our Twitter feed and I somehow deleted the post.  Sigh.  So we’re going to go with more of a bullet-point comparison approach.  Cool?  Cool.

When Angels premiered in New York in 1993:

• we were a few months into the new, democratic administration of Bill Clinton
• the US was slowly recovering from the economic recession we had fallen into during the presidency of George H. W. Bush
• few advances had been made in the study of AIDS and a diagnosis was still a death sentence

Compare to today:

• Angels will open close to the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office
• the economy is only just beginning to recover from a depression that has lasted a year, begun under the presidency of George W. Bush
• advances have been made that might lead to the discovery of a vaccine for AIDS, but
• the rate of infection continues to rise, particularly here in the nation’s capital

The most shocking shift, however, to me, and the biggest reason we need the reminder provided by this play, is the perception of the disease as one that can be controlled.  According to a release from the Kaiser Family Foundation,

“Less than a year after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recalculated the size of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and announced that there were 40 percent more new HIV infections each year than previously believed, a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that Americans’ sense of urgency about HIV/AIDS as a national health problem has fallen dramatically and their concern about HIV as a personal risk has also declined, even among some groups at higher risk.”

In 2007, the national average of infections per 100,000 people is 12.5.  In the District, the rate is 148.1.  In fact, our rate of infection is so high, we’re actually “on par with Uganda and parts of Kenya.“  The general perception of the disease, that it is now only chronic and not fatal, means that prevention is no longer a main concern.  However, while there are many courses of treatment for the disease available, there is no guarantee that any of them will work for any given patient.

In the ’80s an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence.  No one lived.  Eminent death was a certainty.  Today, it’s the one question that doctors can’t answer for new patients.  They might respond to treatements and live for decades, or they might be dead within months.

Setting aside all of the other large themes the plays deal with – progress as individuals and political entities, migration, conversion, identity, sexuality – for the issue of AIDS alone, this play remains intensely topical.  Yes, a study from Thailand recently made headlines declaring that their landmark vaccine trial protected one third of the study members – a significant advancement over any previous vaccine trials.  However, as the NY Times points out, this study may not be as significant as it initially seems.  Over the past 30 years, AIDS has killed over 25 million people.  It shows almost no sign of being curbed.  While the public may be feeling more confidant about their chances of avoiding contracting this illness or living with it as a chronic condition, this is clearly not the case.  And here in the District, we need this reminder more than ever.

Tonight’s visitor is Forum company member Rose McConnell who worked with AIDS patients at NIH in the ’90s and ’00s.

Rose came in before to help Nanna develop a routine for examining Karl in their scene as Nurse Emily and Prior in MILLENNIUM and tonight she came in to help refine that scene and to help Ro and Jim develop their scene in which Belize puts an IV into Roy’s arm.

There were a lot of specific medical concerns to take into account – such as what the sharps box would have looked like in the 80s – as well as specific choices for Ro to make about Belize’s nursing practices.  Would he rip tape and put it on the IV stand before putting on his gloves? We also discussed specific character choices and whether they jive with hospital etiquette – would Belize be allowed to wear nail polish at his job?  Of course, what might end up being more of a concern is whether Mr. Lies (who Ro also plays) would wear nail polish – or maybe he would wear gloves?  Lots of choices to be made – big and small.

In working with Nanna and Karl there was a lot of discussion about the fear of AIDS in the mid ’80s.  Rose and her former co-worker Chuck Fiorentino came in last week to discuss their experiences working with AIDS patients.  Chuck worked with AIDS patients in the ’80s when the disease was discovered and he had a lot of insight about the mentality of nurses at that time.  Very little was known about the disease in ’85 (the play is set in October of ’85 – February of ’86) and AIDS patients were often kept at a great distance by their caretakers because everyone was fearful of infection.  However, watching the psychological impact of this behavior on patients, many nurses took it upon themselves to create a closer personal relationship with their patients.  Rose shared a story about one patient who, having already lost his partner and many close friends to AIDS, gasped when she touched his wrist to take his pulse.  He hadn’t realized how long it had been since someone had touched him.

As we develop the scene they’ll each have to make decisions about their relationship.  This is Prior’s fourth treatment according to the lines.  How much have they gotten to know each other throughout this process.  If Emily is working at an AIDS clinic, perhaps she’s more confident in her interactions with patients, less afraid of touching them without gloves.  And of course, we have to figure out exactly how to navigate the stage business of the examination.  How much time is there, how do the actions of a routine exam interact with the clues in the lines about their actions.  According to nursing procedures, the last thing to check would be the skin – checking for lesions, but this comes first in the lines.  So shifting, shuffling, and always making sure it seems realistic and completely natural.

One of the themes ANGELS constantly returns to is that of progress.  The progress of time, the progress of culture etc.  The script invokes the progress of our ancestors across the Atlantic on their way to settle America and the progress of the Mormons traveling across America looking for Zion.  We’ll get to these topics in later blog posts, as we chart our progress on this giant show. Please feel free to post with any questions or thoughts.  We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at the theatre!  We’ll have a lot to talk about afterwards…

Hey guys,

While I’m in rehearsals, I’ll frequently be twittering about the night’s activities – dramaturgical questions, things we’ve learned from visitors, fun exchanges while working, etc.  You can see a sample of recent tweets on this blog (on the right), but you can keep up with all of our activities by following forumtheatre on twitter!  And maybe some of you can even help me answer a few of the lingering questions…  Anyone know what a hospital sharps box looked like in the 80s?

~elissa

Dramaturg, ANGELS IN AMERICA

On August 19th we started rehearsals for ANGELS IN AMERICA.  We did both first reads back to back and then spent three days on table work for each play before we slowly began getting on our feet.  It’s a huge play and took all of our attention for a little while, but now we’re ready to start blogging about the process!  This is the first of several posts about producing ANGELS.  Keep checking back for more as we get closer to opening – it’s less than a month away!

Tonight my friend Kyle came to ANGELS rehearsal to give us a makeup lesson.

With Karl and Ro playing ex (and ex-ex) drag queens Prior and Belize, we wanted the boys to have some experience with full-on drag makeup. Having gone to Ziegfeld’s last weekend for our first drag show, we were thrilled to get to play dress-up ourselves.

We started by visiting ULTA in Silver Spring to buy foundation and then we set up shop in the ladies’ restroom at the Education Center.  I stepped in as Kyle’s model while Karl and Ro followed along.  The first step was to glue down our eyebrows as we wanted to make them disappear.  Using water-proof glue will keep them from coming loose even if we start sweating.  Then we used clown white to create highlights.

Then we put on lots of foundation with different shades in order to further define our desired facial shape.  It takes Kyle a full three hours to put on drag makeup, but we only had an hour and a half, so we didn’t fully “pound out” our foundation as much as would be desired, but we got a great feel for it.

Next Kyle demonstrated how to apply lip-liner.

I got “big, whore lips.”

Next, Kyle put eye-shadow on all of us and I helped Ro with his eye-liner.

At 8pm the boys had to go run act two of MILLENNIUM so we had to finish.  Kyle spent a little more time putting contours on my face so the boys could get the idea while Ro realized that the first rule of being a drag queen is not to kiss someone on the forehead when you’re wearing bright red lipstick.

We had a fantastic time and hopefully this will help Karl and Ro embrace their inner queens as they continue the rehearsal process.

And in closing, a picture of our teacher, in full drag as Miss Randi Leigh.  Thank you, Kyle!

Nice mention of Forum on last Thursday’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show on DC’s NPR station, WAMU.  Kojo’s guests were theatre critics  Peter Marks and Nelson Pressley of the Washington Post.   The discussion was centered on  DC’s upcoming theatre season and how the economy is forcing some companies to make “safer” choices in their programming selections.  Mr. Marks cited us as “bucking the trend” for producing our most “ambitious” project to date, Angels in America, this Fall.

The Forum-talk starts just past 11 minutes in~

Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright of next season’s Angels in America has been featured in both a Newsweek article and a CNN interview.

ANGELS Playwright Tony Kushner

The Newsweek feature focuses on his latest play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, and the connection of his past work to political and cultural events.  The CNN interview covers his views on gay marriage, Obama, Intelligent Homosexual, and the public’s view of him and his work.

UPDATE:

Also, today’s NYTimes featured an article on Kushner: Cosmos of Kushner, Spinning Forward.