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The World Only Spins Forward- saying goodbye to Angels

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It’s taken me two weeks to write this. Two weeks since I personally said goodbye to this production, and to this play for whoever knows how long. Long before I got on a plane and traveled halfway across the world for it, I asked myself how do you say goodbye? To a production that’s spent two, almost three years nestled in my brain. Two years of it in production. Of writing about it again. Of finding a love for it again. I think the answer is you don’t. I think I never have, much like Prior’s prophecy this play has become part of me. Except I didn’t reject it. Which I think legitimately means I can declare ‘Fuck you I’m a Prophet’ whenever I feel like it. What I will do instead, is write my own Epilogue.   But of course, it’s longer than these two, almost three years. I’ve lived with this play for fourteen years. I’ve grown up with this play. I’ve grown into it. When I started I was over a decade younger than Prior and Louis. This time around I was their age. Per
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More Life- Angels in America on Broadway

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“More Life” Revisiting revival It’s a rare luxury to revisit any theatre production later in its life. More so to see an evolved production. That’s what visiting Angels on Broadway feels like. They are of course the same production…but not. This is a production that has ‘flown home’ and now exists before a home crowd audience. One which knows not only the nuances of the play, but the world in which it lives. Theatre is a living breathing thing, the play we watch on stage is created with the audience. And so, the Broadway production is a unique entity- the same production but different in many respects. “I live in America Louis” on audiences In terms of audiences, this is a critical thing to address- both in terms of the play’s place with Broadway audiences and how they engage with it. But I’ve been going to Broadway for about 15 years, and I’ve never seen a play greeted with such rapture as this one. It was more like watching a musical- applause after every scen
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Fair warning, this blog is a bit of a cop out while I avoid actually writing about Angels. But it occurred to me as I was writing a review blog about The Destiny of Me   that actually it was worth writing about the trip to New York as a whole. Because unlike normal holidays, this turned into something of a pilgrimage. My "journey" for want of a better word to my PhD and therefore with Angels, is very much tied up with New York City, and my relationship with theatre, both with Broadway and Angels. I'm also, in my research slightly obsessed with theatre and place- both the physical theatre spaces, and the 'ghosts' of shows past, and the fictional physical places of these plays. My PhD then was dominated by Angels in America and Rent, both plays which are tied to New York as a place. Both filled with places I've been able to visit in the 'real world' over the years, and both with places that no longer exist either (such is the world, and New York). Th
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More Life! (one last time)

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Six months ago I did a rash thing and booked tickets for Angels on Broadway. I say a rash thing, the moment we knew it was going to New York my Mum immediately said 'we'll have to go'. I'm starting this blog, written just an hour before I leave for the airport, by saying how incredibly grateful I am to my Mum for making it happen. Not only has my poor, long suffering Mother agreed to spend two days of her holiday sitting through a two day show of Angels, she's in fact positively shown off about it. Any friend she tells about the holiday gets proudly told we're seeing an all day show twice. Secretly she loves it as much as I do. But I'm really writing this about her to say thank you- to her and a bunch of dogs. Anyone who follows me on twitter knows Mum started working as a dog sitter about a year ago (after losing our beloved family dog) and well, those monstrous mutts have meant I get to go back to New York and see Angels. As Mum says 'The dogs are payi
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More (Tony award) Life!

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This blog is going to be about Angels, and why being the most nominated play in Tony history is important. But it's also a little bit personal. The Tony’s have book-ended my Theatre Nerd career, and so my research career. When I was 18 I flew to New York the night the Tony’s were happening. It was my first solo trip to the city, and I was going to see Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz again. I'd seen it by accident the December previously, and fallen in love. Not just with the show, but with theatre, and as every theatre kid does at some point, with Broadway. That show changed me in that it's the first I really connected with, but that show also put me on the path to my PhD. It is, for those who don't know, the story of Peter Allen, Australian Singer-Songwriter who died of AIDS. (Except they never mention the word AIDS in the show, but that's another thesis altogether). And to this day I can't explain it but being a slightly strange kid (evidently) that set
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Project book update...oh who the hell knows anymore

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Book what book? So it's been a while. And when I sat down to write this update that's not an update I thought I wouldn't have anything to say because I haven't been working on the book. But while I haven't been comitting words to a page, I guess there is still work that's been done. Even if it is mostly the 'waving pages around in rage' variety. Firstly, yes the book has mostly been on pause. This is mostly because for the last 6-8 weeks my life has been consumed with getting a first draft of a play to the page (and juggling temp job, and life). In April it came down to making a decision about which to work on. And the play won simply because timelines of me getting it to the page, impact more people than myself. I could have negotiated an extension, but the knock on effect there is wider than myself, and the book quite frankly isn't. So for the past 8 weeks I've been consumed by that. Anyone interested in that 'journey' can read
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