Engel in Amerika

Tony Kushner’s epic play ANGELS IN AMERICA, which earned its author a Pulitzer Prize, was written in the early 1990s and looks back on the Reagan era. To this day, it is one of the few iconic works for the queer community that have achieved lasting success even outside of that social group and its characters have long achieved cult status. But ANGELS IN AMERICA is far more than a chronicle of the early days of the AIDS pandemic: The 1980s set the political course towards the neoliberalism of the 21st century, and the gay community’s struggle for recognition gained momentum. And now, 40 years later, Kushner’s iconic characters force us to acknowledge all those issues that remain unresolved with respect to dealing with viruses, capitalism and our approach to tolerance and equality: Prior and Louis, the couple torn apart by a deadly disease; the ultra-capitalist lawyer Roy M. Cohn, who, rather than admitting to suffering from AIDS, claims to have cancer; Joe Pitt, a Mormon struggling to assimilate his sexuality and the dogmas of his religion; the former drag queen Belize, Prior’s best friend and Louis’s harshest critic; and hovering over all these people is an angel that appears to Prior on his deathbed, reminding us that it is worth turning one’s sights away from people every once in a while: “Look up! / Look up! / Prepare the way ...”

US-American director Daniel Kramer marks the play’s 30-year anniversary since its world premiere with a new version at the Akademietheater.

Stroboscopic lighting effects are used in this production.