Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1993play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.
The two parts of the play are separately presentable and entitled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, respectively. The play has been made into a television miniseries, and an opera by Peter Eötvös.
Set in New York City in 1985, the play opens with Louis Ironson, a gay Jew, learning that his lover, WASP Prior Walter, has AIDS. As the play and Prior's illness progress, Louis becomes unable to cope with the emotional stress and moves out. Meanwhile, closeted homosexual Mormon and Republican Joe Pitt, a law clerk in the same judge's office where Louis holds a clerical job, is offered a major job opportunity by his mentor, the McCarthyist lawyer Roy Cohn. Joe doesn't immediately take the job because he feels he has to check with his Valium-addicted, agoraphobic wife, Harper, who is unwilling to move. Roy is himself deeply closeted, and soon discovers that he has AIDS.
Angels in America is a 2003 American HBO miniseries based on the play by the same name. Mike Nichols directed. Set in 1985, the film revolves around six disparate New Yorkers whose lives intersect. At its core, it has the fantastical story of Prior Walter, a gay man living with AIDS who is visited by an angel. The film explores a wide variety of themes, including Reagan era politics, the spreading AIDS epidemic, and a rapidly changing social and political climate.
HBO broadcast the film in various formats: two 3-hour chunks that correspond to "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika", as well as six 1-hour "chapters" that roughly correspond to an act or two of each of these plays; the first three chapters ("Bad News", "In Vitro", and "The Messenger") were initially broadcast on December 7, 2003 to international acclaim, with the final three chapters ("Stop Moving!", "Beyond Nelly", and "Heaven, I'm in Heaven") following.
Angels in America was the most-watched made-for-cable film in 2003, garnering much critical acclaim and multiple Golden Globe and Emmy awards, among other numerous accolades. In 2006, The Seattle Times listed the series amongst "Best of the filmed AIDS portrayals" on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of AIDS.
Music From the HBO Film: Angels in America is the original soundtrack album, on the Nonesuch label, of the 2003 Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-winning miniseries Angels in America. It was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
The original score and songs were all composed by Thomas Newman, unless said otherwise.
In America may refer to:
In America is the third compilation album by saxophonist Kenny G. It was released by Jazz Door in 2001.
In America is a 2003 Irish-American-British drama film directed by Jim Sheridan. The semi-autobiographical screenplay by Sheridan and his daughters Naomi and Kirsten focuses on an immigrant Irish family's struggle to start a new life in New York City, as seen through the eyes of the elder daughter.
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay for the Sheridans, Best Actress for Samantha Morton and Best Supporting Actor for Djimon Hounsou.
In 1982, Johnny and Sarah Sullivan and their daughters Christy and Ariel enter the United States on a tourist visa via Canada, where Johnny was working as an actor. The family settles in New York City, in a rundown Hell's Kitchen tenement occupied by drug addicts, transvestites, and a reclusive Nigerian artist/photographer named Mateo Kuamey. Hanging over the family is the death of their five-year-old son Frankie, who died from a brain tumor. The devout Roman Catholic Johnny questions God and has lost any ability to feel true emotions, which has affected his relationship with his family. Christy believes she has been granted three wishes by her dead brother, which she only uses at times of near-dire consequences for the family as they try to survive in New York.
people dying from lonely days
were walking and trying to take our souls away
Were just spending out our time angels in America slapping on a dime
Slide here for me
get these chains away and I'm never quite free
she walks like she is on a line
angels in America trying to get things done
All on a bad day
all on a run way..
She says IM OK.
Bright lights shine in midnight
he's dying for his children looking for his life
she wonders why she's got to die?
angels in America trying to hard to fly
this time well make it on or own
The forces are teeming and the guns are coming low