Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is known as a modern masterpiece and is certainly one of the core pieces of queer literature ever written. The two-part play won the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award for Best Play, and just about every other award in the drama world when it premiered on Broadway in 1993, two years after it was written. Its frank look at queer issues, the AIDS crisis, and male nudity has also led to controversy, with protests and funding cuts to arts agencies that have supported it. 

Now, ActOut Theatre Group in Lexington, which specializes in LGBTQIA+ theatre, has chosen to do a production of this tremendous play. Part One, Millenium Approaches, will run in early June, with part two to follow this October. 

Novelist, poet, and playwright Silas House sat down with the acclaimed director, Drew Barr, to talk about this ambitious production. Barr has directed productions of new, modern, and classical plays and musicals for theaters across the United States and around the world, including the Dutch and Australian premieres of War Horse. He was the Resident Director for War Horse on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. Also on Broadway, Drew served as associate director for Simon McBurney’s acclaimed revival of All My Sons by Arthur Miller, as well as Nicholas Hytner’s productions of Sweet Smell of Success and Twelfth Night. A graduate of NYU and Stanford, Barr has directed for or guest taught at Julliard, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, SUNY Purchase, and many other universities. He and his husband, film director Tim Kirkman (Lazy Eye, Loggerheads) recently moved to Lexington from Los Angeles.

Angels in America: Part One, Millenium Approaches runs June 6,7, 13, 14, 15 at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Get your tickets here. 

Drew Barr, photo by Cam Sanders

House: Why did you want to start off with such a difficult show?

Barr: Well…it was offered to me; I was asked to do it. And, when you’re asked to direct one of the most impactful plays of 20th Century American theater, how can you say no? Most of my imaginings of how I might introduce myself as a theater director to Lexington involved finding a garage and putting on a one-person show, or an intimate two-hander. And even that seemed daunting, as I really didn’t know anybody in the local theater community. But, “go big or stay locked up in your new home.” And careful what you wish for…it’s a dream opportunity: jumping into the deep end of this extraordinary material with a phenomenal group of talented Lexington actors and theater makers. 

House: Do you think Angels holds a new kind of relevance during the second reign of Trump? 

Barr: I think it has a scarily new kind of relevance… the play was urgent, important, ground-breaking, revelatory—all those great words, when it was first produced (in various productions) in the early 1990s. And, certainly that urgency had to do with putting onstage, embodying, several crucial conversations about the social and political conflicts (AIDS/public healthcare, Reaganism/Conservatism, Individualism vs Community, the Environment!, etc.) that festered throughout the 1980s. One thing I find particularly compelling is that my experience of the play then (and I don’t think that I was alone in this) was of a profound optimism and shared humanity that rang out despite all the intense conflict in the play. It was so cathartic and uplifting to go through hell with all of the characters and emerge at the end with a sense of community and empowerment. (Very much like what we imagine the function of Classical Greek theater…) The play is driven by Tony Kushner’s rigorous use of dialectic and faith in the power of language to convey meaning, to touch souls and to effect change. Now, we find ourselves in a world where those conflicts of the 1980s not only have returned ten-fold, but our ability to talk about and listen to each other has been so degraded. I truly believe that the essential power of theater is in its insistence on the unavoidable present: actors and audience in one space, at one moment, going through an experience together. Angels in America is an unforgettable experience and it reminds us all of the harrowing difficulties of living in the world together; but, its ultimate, empowering message is that we can and must face those difficulties honestly and collectively. 

House: It’s such a huge show. And I assume you’re doing it on a pretty limited budget. How are you pulling that off?

Barr: Very carefully, and I hope thoughtfully, but certainly not without compromises and a leap of faith. But, that’s what theater is all about. The great thing is that Tony Kushner believes whole-heartedly in the idea that theater can never fully achieve its illusionistic aims. He has written about the fact that Angels In America makes huge demands of its actors, designers and director, but that the most successful productions of the play let the audience see the “wires” and see the crew and see how the sausage is made. It’s one of Kushner’s most Brechtian traits. Unlike film and TV, theater only really comes alive when the audience is complicit in the imagining of what is happening. So, we are embracing the challenge of staging this epic play with a few pieces of furniture, and never pretending that we’re anywhere other than the blackbox theater of the Downtown Arts Center, and trusting that our audiences will help us bring this masterpiece to life.

House: What is different about your interpretation of the show that people haven’t seen before?

Barr: What’s great, I think, about theater, is that every incarnation/interpretation of a play is specific to the people who make it, the space where it is performed and the audience that comes to see it. So, at the most basic level, our production will be different because it will be infused with the spirit of the Lexington theater community at the start of Pride Month. I’m hoping that there will be a sense of celebration of the achievement of the play and its legacy, as well as a celebration of the energy of ActOut Theatre Group and the community that is choosing to present a work of art that has been a lightning rod throughout its history. Angels in America is deeply admired throughout the world, and it has been censored and reviled by those who are threatened by the play’s fiercely defiant advocacy for gay/LGBTQ+ (and I would argue by extension—human!) rights. I’ve been very inspired by the inclusive, liberated and liberating energy of ’70s disco and the particularly tragic way that the ‘80s and the AIDS crisis signaled an end to that ecstatic celebration of life. 

L-R Back row: Catherine Gaffney; Daniel Ellis; Jenny Fitzpatrick; Middle row: Keifer Adkins; Evender Hodges Sanders; Mead Ryder; bottom row: Shayne Brakefield and Nick Porter. Photo by Rich Copley.

House: Tell me about the cast. 

Barr: I have been so lucky to have gathered around me a cast of Central Kentucky’s finest local actors. All of them (Kiefer Adkins, Shayne Brakefield, Daniel Ellis, Jenny Fitzgerald, Catherine Gaffney, Evender Hodges, Nick Porter, and Mead Ryder) new to me, and some of them new to each other; but I think audiences will know or recognize them from their extensive work throughout the region. I have been blown away by their commitment to the work and their genuine excitement about bringing Angels to life in 2025. It’s been a blast.

Silas House is a New York Times bestselling writer and a Grammy finalist. His first poetry collection, All These Ghosts, will be published this September. His first mystery, Dead Man Blues, will be published under the pseudonym S.D. House this October.