Looking Back: The ANGELS Effect

Originally submitted by: barcode 2x

So we've now hit upon something new and special at the Blackbird. We just completed a fully-staged reading of ANGELS IN AMERICA I&II with a lecture series to accompany it. We brought together actors from Purple Rose Theatre, Performance Network, and our acting company. The actors has a minimal number of rehearsals, just enough to roughly base-coat block the scenes and put them together. Then the audience came to see it run in its entirety for the first time. We sold out, that was one big surprise. A staged reading sold out? It's unheard of. The energy was high; no one knew what to expect, no one, including the actors, had any idea what would happen. They continued to explore the show and its characters in real time, on the stage. Tears were shed, and a new kind of spectacle was born, for us. We took our tiny theatre and brought ANGELS in. We did it with two chairs and a table. The rest was entirely actor-driven, and it worked. The immediacy of our space makes a big impression. You are close to the actors. Very close. In one, Louis was crouched down, still onstage during a split scene. He was out of focus while Ethel Rosenberg sang to Roy Cohn. And two of our patrons noticed that Louis was singing along with her. They may have been the only ones who saw him. One of the conventions of the show is that our lives are strung together in a spiritual web. Here, Louis hears the voices from a distance and makes new decisions that change his course. It was a discovery, completely spontaneous. And in an experimental setting like this, the actors are forced to make their choices on the spot. It has an improvised feel, but with a focus on the text. ANGELS as avant-garde theatre? Experimental treatments of the text? Anything goes. The director created the right atmosphere, and the actors could move freely within it. Beautiful. Now we are planning another. Where do you go from here?