Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
roles and functions of theatre and drama
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: roles and functions of theatre and drama
In Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the interconnection of people and events, that might ordinarily be viewed as disconnected or unrelated, is implicitly presented in the characters section. Dual roles are implemented by a playwright that has one actor portraying the roles of two or more characters, with or without thematic intentions. The use of “dual roles” in several scenes of this play can be viewed as a demonstration of Kushner’s effort in maintaining the interconnectedness between characters, communities (i.e. queer, heterosexual, AIDS and political communities) and events to which they are relative. This essay will argue that Kushner’s use of dual role’s effectively interconnects characters, events and their communities that may be seen as usually unrelated. Analysis of four specific characters, Antarctica, Oceania, Australia and Europa, in Act Five, Scene Five of “Perestroika”, will demonstrate the connection of each Act Five, Scene Five character, to the actors main character based on the implicit evidence presented in the actors “primary” and “secondary” roles, the scenes dialogue and the character interactions. As one will see, by implementing dual roles, Kushner is able to expand or preserve the concept of a major character while the actor portrays another character, keeping the audience from having to completely renegotiate their knowledge between what they physically see of new characters and actually use the new context to view triumphs and struggles for a major character.
The first dual role that maintains the interconnectedness of characters is that of “The Angel of Antarctica”, played by the actor who also plays Roy. Primarily, the choice of the actor of Roy to play a character entitled Antarctica appears log...
... middle of paper ...
...per to acknowledge the profounder contexts in which Europa and Africanaii interact within the scene.
In summation, the interconnection of people and events that one might ordinarily see as disconnected or unrelated is successfully applied in Angels of America. The use of dual roles, in correlation with dialogue and character interaction allow Kushner’s to interconnect four of the major characters established persona and communities, all the while fulfilling the requirements of other characters to further the play. Consequently, Kushner is able to expand or sustain, rather than renegotiate, his characters for the audience so that the messages, triumphs and struggles of one character may be evolved even while an actor is represented in another character.
Works Cited
Kushner, Tony. Angels in America. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group Inc., 1995. Print.
In Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America” the strong concept of “identity” is explored through each character. Factors such as religion, sexuality, and social class play a role in assigning the play’s characters with their own sense of individuality. Living in such an unaccepting world, at times it can be hard to find your true self. Throughout Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America”, there are quite a few characters who have trouble accepting themselves for who they really are. Whether it is striving for a new identity, or being limited by one according to social standards.
Tony Kushner, in his play Angels in America, explores a multitude of issues pertaining to modern American society including, but not limited to, race, religion, and sexual orientation. Through his diverse character selection, he is able to compare and contrast the many varied experiences that Americans might face today. Through it all, the characters’ lives are all linked together through a common thread: progress, both personal and public. Kushner offers insight on this topic by allowing his characters to discuss what it means to make progress and allowing them to change in their own ways. Careful observation of certain patterns reveals that, in the scope of the play, progress is cyclical in that it follows a sequential process of rootlessness, desire, and sacrifice, which repeats itself.
This paper is a critique of a production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a play written by Alfred Uhry, which was performed and produced by the Ball State University Theatre. Gilbert L. Bloom directed the production and was very successful with producing a truly entertaining, comedic play with an important message about the personal dilemmas that we as individuals with different beliefs and values must encounter in our daily lives.
In Tony Kushners to part play, Angels in America, readers are introduced to a closeted gay man, Joe Pitt and are exposed to his relationship with his Mormon mother, Hannah. An underlying conflict occurs when Hannah finds out her son is a homosexual; a problem which forces her to question her love and acceptance towards her son and her strong Mormon anti gay sentiments and beliefs. This conflict between mother and son helps Kushner illustrate the complexity of sexuality and the changing views of homosexuality.
Many readers feel the tendency to compare Aphra Behn's Oroonoko to William Shakespeare's Othello. Indeed they have many features in common, such as wives executed by husbands, conflicts between white and black characters, deceived heroes, the absolute vulnerability of women, etc. Both works stage male characters at both ends of their conflicts. In Othello, the tragic hero is Othello, and the villain is Iago. In Oroonoko, the hero is Oroonoko, the vice of the first part is the old king, and the second part white men in the colony. In contrast to their husbands, both heroines—Desdemona and Imoinda—seem more like "function characters" who are merely trapped in their husband's fates, occasionally becoming some motivation of their husbands (like Desdemona is Othello's motivation to rage, Imoinda's pregnancy drives Oroonoko restless to escape). While Shakespeare and Behn put much effort in moulding them, to many readers they are merely "perfect wives". This paper aims to argue that, Desdemona and Imoinda's perfect wifehood may be the product of compliance to male-dominated societies, where women are
Angels in America is one of the most powerful plays written in the twentieth century. The play explores themes such as AIDs, homosexuality, drug addiction, spirituality, politics and identity specifically during the 1980’s. This ground breaking piece of work is not only entertaining, but also thought provoking. Angels creates dreamlike envisions of scenes and yet maintains a form of realism in the plots and characters. Tony Kushner is both the author of the play and the screen writer for the brilliant rendition of the HBO mini series with the same name. Angels in America Part 1: The Millennium Approaches is a phenomenal piece of work to read as well as to watch! The story follows a variety of characters in New York City between 1985-1986 dealing with issues of homosexuality, sexual disease, addiction, and denial.
To an extent, the characters in the play represent aspects of the Australian identity and experience. However, Rayson's vivid grasp of speech patterns to evoke character, and her ability to manipulate the audience with humour and pathos move the text beyond mere polemic and stereotype. In an almost Brechtian way, she positions us to analyse as we are entertained and moved.
...ro level forum. She revealed the layers in the plot that tend to get overlooked when viewing a Hollywood musical. Also, her Freudian insight of Linda Low’s character, in which she explains the ego formation and narcissism, mirrors Marchetti’s view of the white knight. Hollywood narrations have notoriously reflected the white male, who I perceive as a representation of American national identity, as a highly narcissistic character. He is portrayed as the hero with patriarchal discourse and male privilege. Overall, both essays dive into the role these films took in constructing a national identity under the veil of a romantic narrative. Both speak to a political subplot on an unconscious, rather than diegetic level. In providing such an in depth analysis, they uncloak the racial and national assimilation that these films depict in relation to the East and West.
Discovering one’s identity is part of life. An identity is unique in that it is what sets us apart, yet can bring us together. Throughout Angels in America the characters were searching for their identity, which I will express to be the “spine”. Every character had faced some method of change during the play. These elements helped us define the theme of the play.
Tony Kushner's two-part play (or, if you will, two plays) Angels In America is one of most famous and most powerful plays about AIDS and gay life to come out of the early 1990s. It not only engages with the political issues surrounding AIDS and homosexuality in Reaganite America, but also deals with deeply philosophical questions of identity and the nature of God. It's no surprise that this play has sparked comment, including the criticism of the conservative right. In this paper, I intend to examine two of the articles written on the play. The first, Gordon Rogoff's "Angels in America, Devils in the Wings," is quite problematic, and errors of fact that the author makes about the play lead me to wonder at its value for analysis. The second article, Charles McNulty's "Angels in America: Tony Kushner's Theses on the Philosophy of History" pose some difficult questions regarding the plays' relationship to the concept of history, arguing that Millennium Approaches1 deconstructs history while Perestroika moves away from this deconstruction. According to McNulty, this is a problem in the second part of the pla...
The audience sees through staging and conversation between the two main characters that the communication of modern relationships
Pulitzer Prize winning author Tony Kushner is a master at asking questions that force audiences to analyze, think, redefine, and realign their perceptions of the way they view the world. The topics and points within his work come from a place of questioning deep within himself; they somehow manage to snake their way to the surface in the form of complex and often times controversial theatrical literature. HOMEBODAY/KABUL is a prime example of his intricate and tightly wound work. A play that examines cultural differences, foreign policy, the American - Middle East conflict, religion, and family dysfunction is nothing short of multifaceted. Underneath the wide array of subject matter, however, Kushner is grappling with his own questions on the topic at hand- questions that form the unequivocal underpinnings of this play: What does HOMEBODY/KABUL have to say about the deterioration of
Casey Sams director’s vision helped bring those aspects to live in a way which not only entertained us, but also made us feel beautiful emotions. From an audience perspective, we understood the story more concisely with the help of actors and their motives. It was through their movements and facial expressions that we saw their personalities, purposes, struggles but also their successes. It was also through movement and speech that we saw transformations like Peter’s which gave us hope and inspired us to always dream
The breadth and scope of this play explains to me that in this community, and in the broader world as well, people are dealing with the same problems now as we did in the past, namely racism. The playwright needed this many characters to tell the story because each character helps to highlight another theme of the play, which is that despite our differences, we are all searching for a place to call home, but for each of us, that place can look very different. Having many characters calls attention to the fact that we all have different ideas of home from each other, but also the fact that “we all conceive of home provides a point of contact,” as the dramaturg, Adam Versényi explains. The characters that talked about their feelings of home were some of the most affecting to me: Maria (Sarita Ocón), Andre (Alex Givens), and Adam (Samuel Ray Gates). For Maria, home was wherever her family is; that is where she and Javier (Carlos Alcala) go as they move from place to place- to where family is. But she also speaks longingly of Mexico, where she used to live on a farm with her family. For Andre, home is in New Orleans, where he was surrounded by people like him, and where “Blackness,” as he puts it, was celebrated. For Adam, home is Marah, North Carolina. But not the Marah of his present, it is the Marah of his past that is his home. He speaks wistfully of getting the town back to the
...ing something that they had either experienced or had a family member experience. As a result, it caused them to identify with the play. The manner in which this play has been configured such that it is drawing on the predatory and imperialistic tendencies displayed by multinational conglomerates provides a way for today's audience to identify with the plight of the characters and their realm.