{"id":4761,"date":"2019-06-07T17:16:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T17:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=4761"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:13","slug":"angels-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2019\/06\/07\/angels-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"ANGELS in AMERICA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Story Behind the Story That \u201cShook Up the State\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

The sound of the crash filled Ball Theater.<\/p>\n

The lights coming from the stage were blinding\u2014yet the audience couldn\u2019t look away.<\/p>\n

Prior tumbled off his bed.<\/p>\n

There she was.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreetings, prophet,\u201d the angel said. \u201cThe great work begins. The messenger has arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience was on the edge of their seats\u2014captivated, breathless.<\/p>\n

Blackout.<\/p>\n

Opening night of Wabash College\u2019s production of Angels in America <\/em>in 1996 was officially over.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was that kind of classic silent moment in the theater and then just an eruption,\u201d Professor of Theater Michael Abbott \u201985 remembers. \u201cThe play was very good, but also, everyone in that room knew what was at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play\u2019s director, Professor of Theater Jim Fisher, was standing in the back of the theater.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat first night, the audience gave the play a standing ovation,\u201d he says. \u201cI think everything gets a standing ovation now. That was not true in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there certainly was no indication that it was going to be true that night either.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in that room knew there were threats, rumors\u2014oh, the rumors of death threats,\u201d Abbott says.<\/p>\n

Two plain-clothes security officers were on hand before and during the show. Stapled onto the programs that evening were warnings that planned demonstrations might occur during the performance and reminders that the Gentleman\u2019s Rule was in effect.<\/p>\n

For Fisher, the end of opening night also marked the end of a long, uphill battle he never expected he\u2019d have to climb.<\/p>\n


\nAngels in America<\/strong> <\/em>is a two-part play written by Tony Kushner that deals with the AIDS epidemic and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.<\/p>\n

And Fisher had the nerve to ask for the rights to perform it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I read the play the first time, it destroyed me. I thought, God, I would love to direct this play. But it\u2019s too much for us. We couldn\u2019t pull this off.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

What he knew he could pull off was getting the playwright, Kushner, to speak at Wabash.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a while, I thought that was going to be it,\u201d Fisher says. \u201cThat would have to satisfy me. But then, while we were waiting for Tony\u2019s visit, I found my courage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher called the agent, who informed him that college and university rights were expected to be released within the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cTony didn\u2019t even know they had released the university rights until I told him we were doing it!\u201d<\/p>\n

The night of Kushner\u2019s visit in October 1995, Fisher announced that Wabash would be performing part one of the play\u2014Angels in America: Millennium Approaches<\/em>\u2014and Wabash would be one of the first colleges to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was like firing a gun,\u201d Fisher remembers. \u201cEverybody started going off in various ways, and kind of unexpectedly. I had been at Wabash 16 or 17 years at that point, and we had never had a situation where people were saying we shouldn\u2019t do a production. I wasn\u2019t ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the next year, Fisher would come out of class, and Marge Jackson, the department secretary, would be standing by the door with phone messages for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was painful,\u201d says Abbott, who was in his second year of teaching at the College. \u201cIt was deeply disturbing, and what would end up being a triumph and, in some ways our greatest moment, in some ways was a catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen push came to shove, I think it became clear to all of us that some in the administration at that time and, in particular, some very vocal trustees, were very unhappy that we were staging the production. The College wasn\u2019t going to shut it down, but it seemed as though it desperately wanted to. And I don\u2019t think Jim was na\u00efve and thought, Oh, the College is going to love it! The trustees are going to be thrilled! <\/em>But what we saw unfold was a response that seemed extremely defensive and extremely contradictory to the principles we set forth as a College.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play was a frequent topic of discussion in The Bachelor <\/em>and the conservative journal The Commentary<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody had their own axe to grind, and it took on a life of its own,\u201d Fisher remembers. \u201cYou had no control over anything that was happening\u2014it was just happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe play has strong language and adult situations, but we\u2019d done that a zillion times up to that point. It was just that it was the meeting of a moment\u2014a moment politically on campus and in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a nightmare.\u201d<\/strong> Abbott pauses. He takes off his glasses as his memories become tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cAngels in America <\/em>became the document for human rights in the gay community,\u201d Abbott says. \u201cI lived in New York in mid- to late \u201980s, and I watched so many people in the theater die. If you were in the theater, you just lost people. There was no cure, no hope. If you got it, you were dead. When I came to Wabash, I carried those experiences with me, and I felt like it was Wabash\u2019s chance, in little old Crawfordsville, Indiana, to rise up and respond to that horrible nightmare. Our failure to do it in the right way was just deeply wounding to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust how controversial it was to do that play at an all-male school in the middle of Indiana\u2014I know that now, but I didn\u2019t get it back then,\u201d says Mathew Boudreaux \u201998, who played Louis. \u201cI knew that some people wouldn\u2019t like it, but, then again, some people didn\u2019t like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boudreaux came out as gay when he was in high school in Texas, but when he came to Wabash, he says he went back into the closet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was petrified. I came to Wabash without ever having visited, but I had gotten a full-ride. I showed up for the first time and thought, Oh wow. This is different.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he auditioned for Angels in America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, even though I knew I was different, the messages I got were that gay people were gross. HIV\/AIDS was gross. I grew up thinking San Francisco was hell on earth. Those were the messages I absorbed as a young, confused, gay man growing up with no support.<\/p>\n

\u201cAngels in America <\/em>and that experience was the first time I fully felt supported. That there was nothing wrong with me. There was so much love for me that it allowed me to shed all of that intolerance I had grown up with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boudreaux played opposite Trevor Fanning \u201900\u2014who had just transferred that semester from New Orleans\u2014and his character, Prior.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the auditions, you could just tell that certain people were meant for certain roles,\u201d Fanning says. \u201cWe all read scenes together, and there was a feeling in the air that this was the right combination. And because every scene is so intimate, we really became a small family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you get lucky as a director,\u201d Fisher says. \u201cThey really moved into professional status, not only in understanding their characters but their deliveries\u2014the way they behaved around the production and how much they cared about it. Good college casts do that to a certain extent, but it was really extraordinary in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

The task that Fisher handed to them was, indeed, extraordinary. Part One of Angels in America <\/em>is three and a half hours long. Its topics are heartbreaking and heavy\u2014 personal and poignant. The stories it told\u2026 weren\u2019t stories that were told.<\/p>\n

They had four weeks to rehearse.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it opened Homecoming Week.\u201d Fanning laughs. \u201cI was a pledge in my fraternity, so there was that. I just remember being completely spent afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Wabash is the kind of place where you say, \u2018The mountain is this high, and we\u2019re going to climb it,\u2019 and the guys are like, \u2018Okay,\u2019\u201d Abbott says with a laugh. \u201cThey don\u2019t even know any better. It\u2019s just, \u2018Okay.\u2019 And they do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lighting designer Marcus Doshi \u201997 had four days to light the show\u2014and it was his senior capstone project.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t remember rehearsals very well because I remember not sleeping,\u201d he says. \u201cI had just wanted to work with Jim, who referred to me as \u2018Grasshopper\u2019 [from the TV series Kung Fu<\/em>) during the show. I really pushed that theater to the edge in terms of what could be accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was because of that workload, but neither Fanning nor Boudreaux remembers much of the controversy that surrounded the production.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember just being immersed in the work,\u201d Boudreaux says. \u201cWe were all in this bubble. I was too focused on the play and doing a good job!\u201d<\/p>\n

Doshi remembers some of it\u2014and he loved it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Commentary <\/em>published stuff, and there were talks of protests. I kind of thought it was great! When you do a show that actually causes controversy, it proves you are making people think, and that\u2019s great. Being able to be a part of something that was pushing boundaries was exciting for me. That\u2019s what it means to be an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, once opening night approached, the entire cast was well aware of the effects <\/em>of the controversy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there wasn\u2019t all that hubbub, it might\u2019ve gone unnoticed,\u201d Fanning says. \u201cBut because there was, it was sold out every night!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of us knew how it was going to be received,\u201d Boudreaux says. \u201cIt was very validating. We were doing the right thing. It was bigger than us and it was bigger than the school at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Validation came from the standing ovation they received every night, the reviews they received in local newspapers and the Indianapolis Star<\/em>, and the praise from Lawrence Biemiller of the Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>, who wrote: \u201cIt did not disappoint, even\u2014and this is not said lightly\u2014in comparison with the Broadway production. It was stunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody brought their A-game, so it was electric in the room,\u201d Doshi says. \u201cBryan Thomas, the actor who played Roy Cohn, was just fabulous\u2014just that energy. It was just a great group of people. Teri Clark, who played Harper, and Heikki Larson. Just fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were sort of minor celebrities on campus for a couple days afterward.\u201d Fisher laughs. \u201cWhen I talked to Tony Kushner about everything going on, he said to me, \u2018You know what\u2019s going to happen, don\u2019t you? Everybody\u2019s going to scream and holler and carry on until the first performance, and then a lot of people will come and see it. You probably will break your box office records.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich we did. At the beginning of the performance, you could feel the tension in the audience. But once people started watching it, I think they forgot to be upset.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nOn the morning <\/strong>of opening night, Fisher watched his daughter, reading an editorial in the local paper about him and the production, burst into tears at the words written about him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, What the hell am I doing this for? <\/em>I wasn\u2019t sure it was going to be worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He knows now. Not because he stuck it to the critics. Not because he proved a point. But because, 23 years later, of what Angels in America <\/em>meant to his cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat play\u2014that was the beginning of me realizing it was okay to be honest with myself and who I really was,\u201d says Boudreaux, who now works in pharmaceuticals as an HIV Therapeutic Specialist at Gilead Sciences. \u201cIt made me feel seen. It allowed me to feel like my voice was important and part of the dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt changed me because it allowed me to be the type of person who went out there and took risks,\u201d says Fanning, who is director of choirs at Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland. \u201cI\u2019m a different person now because of that experience\u2014the way I think, the way I act, the way I dream, the way I imagine life can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a husband now,\u201d Boudreaux adds. \u201cAnd a daughter! Twenty-three years ago, I never thought that would be possible. But after Angels in America<\/em>, I realized I needed to shape my own reality instead of depending on what was behind me. It made me who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbott believes we have come a long way since that time\u2014as a country and even the College as a whole.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something Doshi sees too.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing Angels <\/em>pushed Wabash across a threshold in terms of knowing more ways in which people lived their lives and being more accepting of that,\u201d Doshi says. \u201cI think so. I hope so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whenever Angels <\/em>pops into Abbott\u2019s mind these days, it\u2019s not about the controversy. It\u2019s the\u00a0challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cAngels <\/em>reminded us of what we\u2019re able to do. My work after that has been informed by the idea that, Oh my God, If we can do that, we can do a lot of things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a number of years, we were the department that did Angels<\/em>. We wore that on our sleeves, and I think it established a culture here of defiance. That \u2018Little Giant\u2019 moniker really does fit us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget how hard it was, but what it meant to Trevor? What it meant to Mat? Hopefully we are still providing those similar life-changing experiences. We have to. That\u2019s what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Christina Egbert<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Story Behind the Story That \u201cShook Up the State\u201d The sound of the crash filled Ball Theater. The lights coming from the stage were blinding\u2014yet the audience couldn\u2019t look away. Prior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":4766,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-videos","category-features"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/06\/cast-photorgb-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4761"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4767,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4761\/revisions\/4767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}