The Dramatic Spaces Of Tony Kushner’s Angels In America

Tony Kushner’s Angels in America has aroused widespread concern among the audience and critics since it was published and is acclaimed as "a turning point in the history of gay drama, American theatre, and even the whole American literature". Spiritually, the theme and characters of the play are closer to those of the sociopolitical dramas in the 1930s which adopted conventional theatrical methods. But in structure and spatial sensibility, the play reflects most definitely the dominant features of our time, taking on more avant-garde color.The dramatic space Kushner created is not only a physical space for the fictional events to happen there, but also an aesthetic space carrying spiritual meaning and revealing the actor-audience spiritual interaction. Based on the theory of dramatic space, together with Brecht’s and Henry Lefebvre’s relevant theories, this thesis intends to make a comprehensive study of Tony Kushner’s spatial practice in Angels in America.Firstly, Kushner employs an epic staging-minimal scenery, rapid shifting of scenes and a lot of split scenes, guiding the spectators on their theatrical journey. The invisible off-stage space is presented through dialogue, monologue and acoustic means and interacts with the visible on-stage space. Besides, the scenes experience frequent moves between the living and the dead, earth and heaven, the real and the imagined, endowing the play with magical dramatic effect. Furthermore, Kushner’s dramatic space can also appear as a psychological field revealing the characters’ mental changes and development as well as a psychological space containing the audience’s aesthetic appreciation. The breakdown in family relationships results in the disruption of characters’ psychological space. The playwright employs such representational space as fictional places and characters to help reconstruct the protagonists’ spiritual home. During this process, the playwright strengthens the dramatic tension by creating alienation effect and arousing the audience’s empathy. Finally, Kushner’s dramatic space is also a socio-cultural space covering "national themes", including sexuality, religion, identity, escapism, diaspora, homecoming and redemption of modernity. People and place supplement and depend on each other; spatial changes would lead to the conversion of identity. As the homosexuals and people with AIDS are oppressed by the heterosexual hegemony, Kushner asks for tolerance, compassion and more existential space for them. Meanwhile, confronted with the crisis of modernity, the play suggests individual connect with society and human beings live harmoniously with nature, which indicates Kushner’s philosophical consideration and humanistic concern about human being’s situation in the world. In conclusion, the stage space characterized by fluid and flexible scenes is the manifestation of Kushner’s Marxist dialectics:despite of hardships and sufferings, human beings will not stay put and the wold will spin forward.