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April 10, 2003
The World of the Play
Character emerges from a background of forces. You have become who you are in response to specific determining stimuli in your environment, in the world that feeds your immediate environment. Those forces are the forces of geography (how does �New England� put its stamp on anyone who lives there?); economy (Illustrate how anyone born into poverty must deal with that reality every day. Add geography: Economic forces at work in the inner city.); religion (we have begun to illustrate how this becomes a forceful presence in human behavior terms.); social forces, moral forces, etc. etc. You add others.
When creating dramatic character, always start with the play. The playwright has something to communicate. And she chooses drama as the artistic medium. Not music, not the novel, not painting. Drama. What is drama? Human beings in opposition and conflict in the flesh, in the present, before an audience. So the playwright will dramatise what he wants to communicate with motivated human beings in opposition to one another. So you start with the play, with the themes the play is embodying, dramatizing. Angels in America. What does the title mean? What does it refer to in the play? Why are there no angels in America? A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Implications? Why �gay�? Go beyond personal bias or the socially obvious. Look at the play. What does the reality of �gayness� do in this play? What force at work in Kushner�s America does it embody? In the world of the play, what forces conflict with this force? What is a �Fantasia�? A musical composition which has the appearance of being extemporaneous and in which invention takes precedence over structure. It comes from the Greek word that means �to make visible�. What is made visible in the seemingly extemporaneous improvisational nature of this play? What are the �national themes� with which this play and Tony Kushner are concerned? Angels deals with government and politicians, with the relationship between the law and government, between lawyers and politicians. And this world is opposed to the private world of family relationships and individual needs and loves. Kushner looks at it all from the point of view of the impact of the AIDS crisis on American government in the 80's. So Angels also deals with the medical profession and with caregiving. Religion exerts a strong force in the play: Mormon, Jewish, Christian. There are lots of �minorities� here: black, gay, drag queen, the Communist Jewish traitor, the AIDS patient... Why?
Why must Kushner break beyond the logic of realism? Can we call Kushner�s fantasia �magic realism� of the kind Gabriel Marquez popularized? What part of reality does it focus on that traditional realism can�t? What is the news that angels traditionally announce? Why does the angel come? Does the metaphor of an angel of mercy apply? Why does Ethel Rosenberg appear? What force in America does she evoke? Why do the Priors appear? What traditional force in American identity do they embody? What is the irony here?
What should government do for the governed? Where does compassion exist in this world? What are the forces in America that help you discover and value who you are? What forces work against this self-discovery? What has America come to value? What is the irony?
Think in terms of opposites:
Clout vs. Compassion.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddles masses... versus Power is all.
Become the best that you can be versus Don�t step out of specified boundaries of worth.
What price does America/do Americans pay for becoming first among nations?
The rule of Law versus _________?
Escape versus Salvation
Drugs as escape vs. drugs as salvation
The refusal to recognize the existence of human realities versus The need to love and be loved, fulfilled in one�s humanity, whole.
___________?
Once you discover the themes of the play, there is a world from which the play emerges and that world comprises many opposing, conflicting forces. You set up the world of the play in terms of the opposing forces that make up the fabric of that world. You illustrate these forces in terms of human interaction, conflict. Characters emerge from the background of these opposing forces as embodiments of the forces to dramatize the themes. In Angels what force does Louis embody? What is its opposite? Which character embodies that opposing force? What must become important to a person who will become a Harper so that she can play her active part in dramatizing Kushner�s themes? Prior? Hannah?
Set up the world of the play in terms of human interaction and then discover how individual characters emerge from the significant, meaningful, forces in that world. Character emerges in response to the significant stimuli of the world of the play. And responses to environment and situation become needs, become drives, and finally become the person�s basic driving force or motivation in life.
Begin with a young lawyer. How do you define success? Clarence Darrow? Justice for all? Do some research that helps to enact legislation that protects workers from hazardous working conditions. You get a $75 a week raise and a pat on the back.
Go to lunch with other young lawyers. One of them just got promoted. What�s everyone working on? What becomes important in this group? What�s the prize? How do you win? How do you play? (Give yourself some specific answers to these questions to work toward.)
Go to work for a United States Senator. He�s on a crusade. (It was communists then, what might it be for today?) You do research for him�Go to the law library. Go to public facilities that relate to the project. Get all the information you can. Take it to a meeting with him. What happens? (Does he offer you a promotion or does he throw the files in a wastebasket and call you an egghead asshole with a stick up your ass?)
He takes you to lunch with a prominent judge. You come armed with research. He comes armed with personal dirt on the guy. The judge looks like a deer in the headlights and then a man with a broken spine. The judge leaves. The senator reams you out. You realize something. You learn something. (Perhaps you decide to leave this particular job. If you are becoming a Roy Cohn, what do you learn? What do you decide? What do you do as a result?)
Work improvisationally toward the first time you use your power as a lawyer to choke the life out of somebody. Work toward discovering the sheer joy of shouting or striking or ____? another person into a paralysis of fear of you. Discover power.
Then add stuff like this:
Go to a bar. Not an actual gay bar. You wouldn�t do that at this time. You go to a dark non-descript lounge. You look for the right signals. It is furtive, sleazy. Try to pick somebody up. He rejects you.
Next night. Again. This time someone sneers at you, calls you an ugly Jew faggot.
Go home. Mix yourself a drink. Punch a wall.
Try again.
Try again. Take home a bigger loser than you are. Humiliate him.
Get to the point where you offer to pay somebody.
Get to the point where legal/political power translates into power in sex too.
You are setting up the forces in the world of Angels that will end up creating a Roy Cohn. In utterly differing ways, they will help to create a Louis and a Prior and a Belize too.
Now, set up the more specific forces in the Angel world from which a Prior and Belize emerge.
Do the same with the Mormon world of Hannah and Harper and Joe. Your goal: Of all the opposing, conflicting forces that make up the Mormon world, which ones lead directly to turning a person into a Harper? a Joe? a Hannah? (Spend time doing this part of the creative work. It is not yet creating the characterization, but it is setting up the kinds interactions, values, forces, ethics, desires, etc., that shape a person into a Harper, a Joe, a Hannah.)
Add sex. Where does it fit into the Mormon world? Mormon values (expressed specifically in human interactions) come into conflict with gay sexual attractions (illustrate in the Utah Mormon world.) Where does a desire for law and politics come in? A young Mormon male is being turned into a Joe.
The world of Angels in America, a gay fantasia on political themes (consider the concepts in that description. Illustrate each.), is a world of law and politics and religion and sexuality. What is it that the play says about these forces, these themes? How does each character some to embody these forces in conflict?
Have I got you thinking? Actively? In actor�s terms?