Angels, theater, politics and moles

a never published breakfast talk with Tony Kushner

Resumen

Interview with North-American playwright Tony Kushner about Angels of America, of course, but also his earlier plays, which are not so talked about, although they are as meaningful as the famous Angels. Interestingly, in Kushner’s mind, Angels is not and never was a play about AIDS, consequently it is not a play about the gay community. His aim was never to raise public awareness of the epidemic, but to write a play about being alive in times of upheaval, a play about the catastrophe of what Reaganism really was — a terrifying ideological perversion that occurred in the 80s, and his fear of history repeating itself. According to the playwright, a play does not set out to teach people how to feel; yet Angels in America is a play that is resistant to settling, and probably because there is no happy version of it, it ends up guiding people on how to feel.