Staging intersubjectivity: Queer theory, queer theatre, Tony Kushner and 'Angels in America'

Although subtitled "a Gay Fantasia on National Themes," the first performances in 1992 of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America coincided with the beginning of the academic movement known as queer theory. The intricate portraits of men who have sex with men in Kushner's play form a complicated, unsentimental understanding of the AIDS pandemic, but the play (as both written and performance texts) contributes to queer identity politics in a way that goes beyond the traditional liberation model of the post-Stonewall gay and lesbian movements. By using Jessica Benjamin's model of recognition from object-relational psychoanalysis, it is possible to see how Kushner creates spaces within his text that put an effectively operating intersubjectivity on the stage.; Chapter one provides a genealogy of queer theory and looks at what this can mean when applied to various elements of theatrical production and criticism. Chapter two looks at Jessica Benjamin's theories of recognition, expanding the doctor/patient paradigm to self and Other, and eventually setting her theories in a theatrical context. Tony Kushner's plays have been described as a theatre of dialectics, and chapter three examines two other theatres of dialectics---those of George Bernard Shaw and Bertolt Brecht---that have strong resonances within Angels in America. Under investigation, Kushner's version of epic theatre is revealed as a hybrid, in that it allows space for empathy as well as reason in terms of the audience's reaction to the theatrical event. Chapters four and five take the suggestions of mutual recognition of subjectivities from Jessica Benajamin's theories and look at how this can be put in conversation with cross-cultural performance and arts education.; Now that queer theory has passed its tenth anniversary, critics such as Max H. Kirsch, are suggesting that some of the theory's basic principles such as the emphasis on the individual, short-circuit the formations of communities essential for effective social change. These last two chapters investigate this contention by examining the appropriations of universals in four distinct contexts: the Royal National Theatre's productions of Kushner's play; actor training; theatre studies; and process drama.