Kudos to An Other Theater Company for another wonderful evening of theater with their staged reading of the second half of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece.
Director, Kacey Spadafora assembled his entire cast from the first part, Millennium Approaches and treated us the audience to a wonderfully staged reading with the same incredible performances by his brilliant ensemble!
This part of Kushner's seminal work is even more emotionally impacted and I was completely moved by evening's end! The brilliant HBO mini-series left a lot out, which I can see why Kushner, who adapted his own play for the mini-series did that because most of what was left out wouldn't have worked on screen, only on stage. This is why theater is so different from screen work.
Kushner's piece really gets to the soul of humanity and what makes us tick. But it is also now an incredible historical allegory. The entire story is set in the mid 80's, right in the heart of the AIDS crisis and ends in the early 90's where the cold war is coming to an end and the LGBT civil rights movement was just beginning to gain momentum again. The ending of Kushner's piece has the character of Prior Walter directly addressing the audience saying, "We're not going to die secret deaths any longer. We will be citizens!" How prophetic that is today with the victories of Same Sex Marriage on a national level, the Matthew Shepherd Civil Rights Act, more and more corporations including Sexual Orientation in their anti-discrimination policies, etc.
Thank you An Other Theater Company for having the courage to bring this work to Utah County! I will never forget the experience! Please give this infant theater company your support! They are headed into their second season this fall and they are truly a new and fresh artistic voice in the Utah County theatrical landscape. We need it here so badly!
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