SOURCE: Kruger, Steven F. “Identity and Conversion in Angels in America.” In Approaching the Millennium: Essays on “Angels in America,” edited by Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger, pp. 151-69. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Kruger examines the intersection of individual identity and collective history in Angels in America.

The titles and subtitles of Tony Kushner's Angels in America emphasize its status as political drama, announcing its exploration of “national themes” at a particular moment in global and cosmic history—the moment of “perestroika” as “millennium approaches.” At the same time, these titles and subtitles call attention to the personal and psychological as crucial terms for the play's political analysis. This is a “gay fantasia on national themes,” an intervention in American politics that comes from a specified identity position and that depends somehow upon fantasy. The “angels” of the play's main...