Showing posts with label Angels in America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Angels in America. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Angels Revisited

Last Sunday I caught Part 2 of Angels In America before it closes on Broadway in the next few days. The guy I'd been seeing had not been able to get tickets to the second half, and I was able to score some very reasonably priced tickets that would allow him to see the second part, and for me to hold this production close to my metaphorical bosom before it leaves forever.

God, I love this show. God, I love this production. For how sprawling and far reaching and important and inclusive it is. For Andrew Garfield and how empathetic he is, and the fact that both David and I can adore him and not feel unmoored by the awareness that the person we are seeing finds other men attractive, that's how undeniably lovely he is in this play. I love it for it's humor. For its cold neon glamor, and its earnestness. And for its many many allusions to The Wizard Of Oz. I want to live inside it, it's so beautiful. But only because I know that its a journey that I know how it ends. Knowing that ending allows me to relish in the way we get to that ending, and to find joy in each twist and rest along the way. It's kind of the same way people want to live in the forties. Our whole fucking way of life was at stake, and people were being slaughtered. Our loved ones were going off to shoot people and may never come back, but Oh, the clothing! And fashion!

I hope this play comes back in my lifetime, and that I can go back and hear those words spoken, see those tender fuck-ups struggle just like I do through my own jiggles and bounces. It will be heart wrenching, and bittersweet, and I will laugh and cry with another group of people as we acknowledge our commonalities together through "mutual emotion", but it will never be the same. This is what theatre has that is special, and that Hollywood can never own. That intimacy, that momentous thrill, and that magic of vanishing.



My date caught a bit of the final bows on his phone, and I was equal parts annoyed and grateful that he did it. It's nice to have even the smallest piece to keep and remember.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Angels in New York

Today I find myself nursing a completely irrational, absolutely unrealistic crush. They are famous people, some of them, actors all, and we've never met. You know the story. And I know it will fade! I know I am bewitched by the roles as much as the people. But that's also part of the magic of the theater, so much more intimate a form of communication than the cold dead touch of celluloid could ever be. To watch someone, several someones actually, giving their all to make a story come to life, working for a full eight hours, throwing themselves against the metaphorical and literal wall in order to make a story come to life for you? Putting themselves heart and mind into another person's circumstances and trying to imagine how they would feel and behave if they were in this person's shoes from day one of life? It's very much a gift. And so yes, I'm being coy about my fanboy feelings, and yet, a couple of days after seeing both parts of Angels In America at The Neil Simon Theatre and letting the experience continue to wash over and affect me, I do have a new and very real devotion for these actors, and this story.




And yes, Andrew Garfield has a particular appeal in the way that a lanky and sensitive gent who is giving the performance of a lifetime can have on another sensitive and not so lanky gent. It helps that this is an incredible role he is playing, that of Prior Walter. In my opinion, Prior, and not Roy Cohn, is the part to covet. Sure Roy is an incredible monster, a train wreck of a part that one can't help but watch greedily, but Prior is the heart of the story. Open hearted, thriving in his world, completely at home in all his complexity. He's a rebel in a way that I will never be, defiantly being an out gay male in a world where the majority of people (even the liberals!) were still figuring out how they felt about gay people. Most people at that time, and even ten years later, had thoughts like "Good people the gays? Sure. What two people do in their bedroom? Nobody's business. Kind people? Sometimes the kindest. Artistic! Creative! But would I want to be one? Never. Why put yourself through that? And confused!! Living a life where they can never be the gender they want to be, uncomfortable in their own skin, and performing a role for us, pretending they have parts they do not have to avoid being their true selves. And life can fuck you up. Childhood can fuck you up. But do these flaws, these things that they are, whether their fault or not, do they mean I should let them be near my children to unknowingly communicate that sickness to little souls still forming? I can't do that to my kid."

Of course now, many of us are coming to the belief that the soul, or our DNA, that which makes us up, comes into this world, already formed. Pliable, and shapable like a newborns soft spot at the back of her skull, but there is no doubting that from the beginning, there is a "there" there.

This is not the world of Prior, and more than that, there is a war on. And those most afflicted and affected by it are not winning that war. But Prior is fighting that war, against a disease and a culture, telling the world to fuck off because he is going to love the person he cares for in a public way, just like everybody else gets to. Because that declaration is a very important part of the act of loving. And then we discover that this "fabulous creature", this supportive boyfriend, lover of the past, this fierce spirit, this kindred spirit, is afflicted. And we, the audience proceed to go on this eight hour journey with him, watching him from afar, and yet feeling like our finger tips are just inches from his own, and that if we extended them far enough we would grab onto his hand and walk every step with him, while at the same time we wonder if we would. We wonder if we would have Prior's strength if life had not handed us his fate. We want to be him at the same time that we fear we are his treacherous, hand wringing companion. And if the person bringing Walter to life is doing his work, we love him. You can't help, but love him. And it's a strange kind of love because you admire this actor because you know he is performing an illusion. He is not gay. Does not really know this undeniable fact of Prior's life from the inside out. And as a gay person, some piece of me wished he was gay so I could feel like he was truly reaching out to me and saying "I understand. I am like you, and I will take this journey for you." And yet, when you stop and think about it, that's exactly what he is doing. He is saying "I have been in circumstances where I felt lost, I often feel like I am fighting a world that doesn't understand me, and as much as I can, and I will take this journey for you". I mean anyone who plays anyone, even their own self on stage, is taking a leap to understand something they are not, or no longer are. And so, eight hours after watching this man undergo a willing obstacle course of imaginary nightmares and heartbreak, terror and revelation, and after his gracious and humble curtain speech worthy of Hugh Grant at his most charmingly chagrined, I am left, days later with the gentle reverberations of his efforts.

And of all their efforts. For everyone in this performance is putting their entire lifetimes into these parts. Their efforts and Kushner's will be rewarded by connecting with and winning the heart of a different member of the audience, for every individual seeing this play will see a different story, and view it through different eyes. Those who see themselves as innocent seekers will find comfort in Prior or Harper. The mothers will likely thank Hannah Pitt for the stoic way in which she suffers the sins of her child and braves connection with those so little like her on the surface.  Those still struggling with their sexuality may latch on to Joe or to Roy, and those who lived through this time and gave more than they felt they were capable of will understand too well what Belize and Louis are experiencing.




These are people who's stories were not being told in this way twenty-five years ago. And now? These stories need to continue to be told. And not just Prior's. Not just Roy's. Or Louis's, or Joe's. The way that we can honor these feelings of admiration, goodwill and gratitude that we are left with is to to speak about this story, and and to honor those who people it. To broaden that support to stories in which the Hannah's, the Belize's and the Harper's of the world get told more fully and can inspire the attention and effort which supports writers who's hearts are pouring out the words which allow these other untold stories to take center stage.


Sunday, March 4, 2018

Proceed From Joy


"Be splendid tonight, be focused, have fun, make theater: That's our way of repudiating the bullies, the killjoys, the busybodies and blowhards. We know the secret of making art, while they only know the minor secret of making mischief. We proceed from joy, they only have their misery." - from Tony Kushner to the staff of the Charlotte Rep, facing possible closure of their production of Angels in America in North Carolina (and as excerpted from The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent Of Angels In America by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois

Monday, February 26, 2018

Is It A Rock Band???

Last Wednesday I did something pretty atypical for me. I stopped by the local gay bar on the way home around 6PM and ordered a drink. It was Happy Hour after all, and I figured that there would be a solid group of people taking advantage of two for one drinks, and yet... it was me, the owner, the bartender, and a regular who seemed more staff than patron. And yet, I've always been one to dive into social situations head first. So after about fifteen minutes of solitary sitting, watching them gab amongst themselves, I got a notification for discounted tickets to the upcoming revival of Angels in America, a production that had begun in London and is headed to New York, and which I'm frankly, very excited to see. So I thought to myself, "here's an easy icebreaker, I'll bring up the new revival and we'll have a lively theatrical discussion." But the response? Quizzical looks, and a tilted head from the bartender as he asked "Is that a band?" The bartender asked.

The owner, who is old enough, didn't know it either. And to be fair, while I feel like the play is ever present, it has been 25 years since it premiered on Broadway.  The patron though? The one who had been playing on his laptop? He had heard of it, and I felt a little vindicated. And yet, I'm still a little surprised, as this is considered the greatest American play in the past quarter of a century. But then, maybe it didn't matter.  maybe people today, even gay people, aren't as culturally aware as I would think.  I mean, I didn't think to toss out A Streetcar Named Desire and see what reaction that would have gotten. I would like to think that more people would have heard of that, but in truth, I don't know that they would have. And shouldn't they? 

I first saw the play around 1998, ironically, with a girl I had been seeing for a while. And it was a strange experience to see. It was a glimpse at a distasteful world. A world I didn't quite grasp, in spite of the fact that in my reality, I was reaching toward it with one hand and pushing it away with another. Holding hands with a man in the park as we chat about Come Back Little Sheba? Lounging around in full drag? Having random sex with a leather daddy? Embracing the full force of my feminine side in the daylight, owning every ounce of me?  I couldn't see it. Didn't want to. Would not be going there. Ever. And of all the characters, if I related to any, I related to Harper, the Mormon mother in denial who slowly but surely inched her way into a new and open way of being. Strange that I didn't see myself in Joe Pitt. And yet, I think I saw him as too far above me. Better looking than me, more manly than me, more chiseled, ramrod straight and respectable. All things I had never really succeeded at being. But, like Joe, I saw myself as above gay culture. They were the victims, thy were the weak ones. Weren't they? They luxuriated in femininity and vulnerability. Didn't they?
And I had already upon seeing this play experienced the giddy, floor shaking experience of a really great kiss from a man, but I did not consider myself gay, because I had not completely given into camp, into ceaseless emoting, into gooey public intimacy with a man as if we were romantic. 

And yet, now? I have done a version of every single one of those things that I cringed at before. And those that I haven't? Those are the experiences I long for. A long term relationship with one that I know intimately from day to day? I want that. That thing that when I first saw this play, that I saw as men "playing house"? I yearn for it. Ad I'm grateful. I know that what I am and who I am and what I've done isn't "gay" for everyone. But it is for me, and I am grateful. Grateful to be a part of a community who has been through the experiences painted in this piece. Grateful to have had some of those experiences myself, grateful to be watching the play from what feels like the inside out rather than looking from the outside in, like a petrie dish. Because there's so little redemption to be found in judgement, and so much to be had when one can look at himself and ask "Why am I judging? What is the fear here about?" And then step through that fear. 

Joe's resolution at the end of the play is ambiguous to say the least. But, as someone who's journey has been a version of his, even though he "pretended" so much better than I ever could have, fI see hope for him. We only see him at the beginning of his journey, and the years have a way of changing a person if you are able to strip away the false and look at the reality of yourself and who and how you are in the world. And so, yes. People, gay and straight need to know this play. They need to look back on our history, our post stonewall history, which was every bit as much a struggle for those who experienced it, as the closeted years of those before. We need to be able to see a time, which is close to the one we currently live in than it was just two years ago, if only to know that we can, and with strength and with our eyes open, we will.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Visited By "Angels"

I've been thinking a lot lately about Angels in America.  It's one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever experienced, and I've seen and felt different ways about it, as I changed and grew.  It's a piece that haunts me, like Streetcar, as it has a significance to my inner life-- my fears, my hopes,  that I can't completely fathom, but feel in my gut.  And each time I explore it, it hits me with a little more resonance.

The first time I saw the play I was with a girl I was seeing at the time.  We'd been together for about a year, though never "officially" (her decision, not mine) and around the time I met her I had had my first heady experience with another man.  He'd pursued me relentlessly at a time I felt very UN-pursuable, and being with him began to unlock feelings in me that I'd previously thought I could just ignore.  That idea of the closet??  It was a different thing for me.  The "closet" was never something I was knowingly locked inside.  Rather, it was a place inside me that I was choosing to ignore.  A locked corridor that I was afraid, if I opened its doors, I would never be able to close.  I was right.  I couldn't close it again, once it was open.  And I was wrong in the fact that opening that door didn't bring about hopelessness.  It didn't turn me into a joke of a human.  It made me far more human and honest than I could have thought was possible.  And it left me, in many ways, completely the same.
But at the time I first saw that show, I was just "experimenting".  I'd never done it in college (no one would have me) and now was the time. I did not see myself as gay.  This was not  play about me.  It was about "them".  I could sympathize with them, cry for them, appreciate them, but I was not them.  They were not of me.

By the time the HBO mini series came into life, I had really started explore this side of myself.  I had met someone who brought about all those mental fireworks I'd thought were a fairy tale.  While our relationship didn't last, the decision to never accept anything less than these feelings, that was permanent.  And this time?  It was a story about me.  A story that celebrated my passions, that made them mundane, it put me as a person in history.  It gave me a history.

It's true about art that whether it is or isn't appreciated says more about the person viewing it than about the work itself.  Art that truly comes from an honest place, a place of inquiry, of self exposure-- it's mere creation is success.  It's a gift to the creator and to those who experience it, and it will mean different things to different people.  Or to the SAME people, in different parts of their lives.  I'm glad I was exposed to works of art at a young age that I could only truly come to understand as I aged, because to have seen them in a hazy blur made it that much more significant when they came into focus a bit more.

There is a piece on Slate.com that is an oral history of the making of Angels in America, and if you have a relationship to this play, I could not recommend it more.  It made me feel again all those surges of expectation and jolts of recognition that the show itself made me feel.  If you don't know the play?  Please watch this mini-series.  I beg you.

Today, I am making a trek to Central Park to visit The Bethesda Fountain which is so central to the story, as I feel pretty certain I will be re-visiting this story again to see what else it has in store.

Cursive

  Last week I returned to doing my  morning pages , a practice I was committed to for years, and then abandoned, at least partially in the d...