A century-old theater troupe in Bloomington-Normal is committed to keeping things fresh.
Community Players Theatre [CPT] opens its 104th season with its first-ever production of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, part one of a celebrated two-part epic set in New York City at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Director Ashleigh Rae-Lynn said it was the right time to bring new stories to Community Players’ audience.
“This is a story that I think our patrons and our community are ready to see and listen to,” Rae-Lynn said on WGLT’s Sound Ideas. “It’s a very moving and provocative show. I don’t know if provocative is the right word, but… it’s gritty.”
Rae-Lynn also leads CPT’s play-reading committee, which is responsible for reviewing scripts and selecting repertoire for the season.
“I wanted to bring a lot of new works to CPT’s stage,” she said. “In the last two seasons I’ve planned, 15 of the 16 shows have never been done here before.”
This summer’s musical Annie being the lone exception.
Parker Daugherty plays Prior Walter, a gay man living with AIDS whose boyfriend leaves him when he learns his partner of his diagnosis. Daugherty, a recent graduate of Illinois State University’s theater school, has no memory of the AIDS epidemic — he wasn’t born yet.
“It is such a specific moment in history and it tells that story in a way that doesn’t hide away from the darkness of it but also brings moments of levity and moments of magic that I think keep the audience from sinking too low for those people who might have memories of this time,” he said.
“This is not a play about AIDS. That is not [Prior’s] defining characteristic. He’s lived for so long before that and he has a life completely outside of it. [AIDS] is something that crashes in, but doesn’t define him.”
In one scene, Prior’s story intersects with Harper Pitt [Kayla Pulliam-Mendoza], an agoraphobic Mormon woman from Utah who is addicted to valium.
“She has moved to New York with her husband. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything that she finds out her husband is gay,” said Pulliam-Mendoza. “She struggles with anxiety and she doesn’t know what the truth is. She is constantly tormented by her upbringing, which has always stifled who she really is.”
Prior and Harper experience a shared hallucination—his spurred on by a sickness-induced psychosis, and hers from the valium.
“She often has hallucinations,” Pulliam-Mendoza said. “This is the only hallucination she has with a real person, and they have never seen each other in the real world.
“They are the heart of this show, and they have this shared connection,” she said. “They’re both lost and struggling, and they’re both these creative souls. They see things in each other that other people don’t see.”
The interaction, Pulliam-Mendoza said, changes the course of the play, snapping Harper and Prior back to reality—as both of their worlds fall apart.
“It’s my favorite scene. I’ll just say it. It’s my favorite scene in the show.”
Why now and not then?
It is perhaps not by accident that it’s taken this long for Community Players to produce Angels in America. It’s a big show, with a deep bench of casting needs. It’s a long show [the first part, Millennium Approaches, clocks in at around three and a half hours with two intermissions].
And it’s a fascinating muddling of fiction and nonfiction, featuring a dramatized versions of Roy Cohn [Peter Kimerling], the McCarthy-era lawyer and conservative activist who prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg [also characters in the show].
A flurry of plays and other artworks about the AIDS epidemic were created in its aftermath, serving as a kind of genre. During its 1984-85 season, the Community Players produced Life with Father, Brigadoon, Holiday on Broadway, the Miracle Worker, Puss in Boots and the Fantasticks. The year Angels in America was written [1991], the repertoire included The King and I, The Odd Couple, Grease!, Annie and Into the Woods, among others.
It’s not clear if the Players simply had their fingers in their years amid a state of denial or if they unintentionally missed the moment. Indeed, the “genre” was emerging during the culture wars of the religious right propped up by the Reagan administration.
In any case, Dougherty isn’t the only person involved in this Angels in America who didn’t live through the period. The show’s dramaturg has been a tremendous resource, he said, as well as cast, crew and staff members who have religiously studied the show. Dave Bentlin of Prairie Pride Coalition has been a resource. Prairie Pride has additionally prepared a lobby display about the AIDS epidemic in McLean County.
“Angels in America is, to me—it’s equivalent to Shakespeare. It’s one of the greatest plays in the American theater canon,” said Pulliam-Mendoza. “It is kind of a sacred text to a lot of us. It’s the kind of show that we all lined up for and all were banging at the gate to do, because it covers the entire gamut of what it means to be human."
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches runs through Sept. 20 at Community Players Theatre, 201 Robinhood Lane, Bloomington. The show includes adult language and themes and may not be suitable for children. Tickets are $17 at 309-663-2121 and communityplayers.org.
