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STONE ANGELS: PAINFUL PROGRESS AFTER THE MILLENNIUM

"STONE ANGELS: PAINFUL PROGRESS AFTER THE MILLENNIUM." Etudes, vol. 4, no. 1, Dec. 2018. http://www.etudesonline.com/dec2018heiner.html

With the recent revival and commercial success of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, we gain a new opportunity to examine and question our cultural history. As we move further from the era in which the play takes place, the ability to historicize the action becomes more stable and the narrative crystallizes within its context. However, categorizing Angels in America as an historical artifact to be analyzed also inhibits further development regarding our relationship with the past. Rather than tightly binding the play to the historical moment it depicts, perhaps an alternative approach lies in exploring the ideology it portrays, and using its structure to understand the cultural relationship between the contemporary moment and its interaction with the nearness of this history. This paper questions how historicism and formalism can interact with the structure and creation of Angels to produce relevant contemporary understanding for both audiences and practitioners as we imagine history, ideology, utopia, loss, and community.


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