Introduction

Tony Kushner's two-part play, Angels in America (1992), has been lauded by critics and audiences alike as one of the most important American plays of the twentieth century. Set during the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Angels in America freezes a period in American history when homosexuals were firmly outside of the mainstream, AIDS was a death sentence, and political leaders were preaching compassion without showing it. The play captures the fear, hate, ignorance, and prejudice that shrouded the AIDS epidemic in its early years, and shows the toll of the disease on individual health, social status, and identity, as well as on society as a whole.

The main plotline of Angels in America revolves around two couples living in New York City in the mid-1980s. Within those two pairs, each of...