I'm here because people with AIDS live in the streets of New York City
And that's the policy of this administration, it's not a mistake
The AIDS virus attacks and destroys white blood cells, shipping the body of its resistance to other illnesses
AIDS victims soon fall prey to cancers, pneumonia, fevers and wasting sickness
Equally frightening, the number of AIDS cases is doubling within a time span often to twelve months
And there is still no known cure
The play was written about the mid-Eighties...
...about the politics of the AIDS epidemic, which is now a global pandemic
The fundamental situation of a group of disenfranchised...
...and oppressed people snuggling for emancipation...
...in the middle of a biological calamity
15,000 Americans have already died from the disease and the numbers are doubling each year
If it continues at this rate, it's estimated that in 1990 more people could die of AIDS in that year...
...than were killed on the American side in the Vietnam War
And all the doctors can offer for now is comfort
Everybody in Angels is facing incredibly difficult things
Young people are facing death at an age when young people should never have to face death
Or they're facing having to take care of someone with a catastrophic illness...
...at an age when they're not really together enough to do that
I was very drawn to its magic realism, the supernatural, the subconscious, the bravery of it
It starts off in quite domestic, realistic settings
And then it grows and grows and grows, beyond and beyond and beyond that
Dykes and fags are here to say We have Gay Pride everyday
I gave it the title A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
I didn't know at the time that I meant it, or that anyone would ever take that seriously
It thought it was kind of a campy, queeny thing to do, and it would be sort of fun
But the play does have an ambition, I mean there's no question about it
I felt that theatre was too willing to concede certain powers to film
Film was always so much better at making plausible illusion than theatre is
But of course the whole point of illusion in theatre is that it's not good
That it's always easy to see through, except when your emotions are engaged...
...and you forget that you don't believe it
And you start to believe it, and that's, I think, the core of the theatrical experience
There's a beautiful theatricality to it all. There's a sort of gloriousness to it...
...there's a sort of panache and an elegance to the way it's written...
...and to the way that the characters have a sense of wit and performance to them
As a way of coping with the situation, which if they didn't deal with it...
...in that way of being witty or elegant, then they would just sort of sink into the doldrums
I mean, I totally understand that, I think, because I'm from a very theatrical family
They used to do that all the time
I think that some of the political questions that the play addresses are still relevant
Some of them are more relevant
I would be much happier if it felt like an antique bit of, sort of like, nostalgia...
...and Reaganism had just sort of gone away
It's quite upsetting, that we're still listening to the same nonsense
When Tony wrote the plays, I think he flied to keep it contained to one play
But he found that these characters couldn't resolve themselves in three hours
I suppose what he wanted to do with them was to really take them down into the depths of the murky water...
...and bring them out cleansed. So that's not going to be a quick, easy thing
I think the thing that's always been true about Angels in America...
...is that, it really is about human relationships, love, betrayal, fear, mortality
And I don't know that those things become irrelevant at any point
It's about how we deal with erosion. How we find ways of renewing ourselves and surviving