NTU's drama department performs `Angels in America'

Set against a backdrop of conservative sexual politics and the spread of AIDS in the US, Tony Kushner's 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Angels In America: Millennium Approaches, is being staged in Mandarin by the graduating class of the National Taiwan University (NTU) drama department this weekend.

It has an easy storyline to follow but concentrates heavily on US politics with several references to historical events and figures.

This weekend's show uses the same translation as Stan Lai's (賴聲川) Performance Workshop used in 1996. Although Lai's production received mixed responses, NTU student director Wang Hong-yuan (王宏元) is convinced the content is accessible to a younger generation of Taiwanese theatergoers.

"Our main reason for doing this play is because it addresses themes of racism and homosexuality. These are socially important issues in any country and ones we [the graduating class] wanted to explore in our final project," Wang said.

The script exposes a range of reactions to the AIDS epidemic, mainly society's political and prejudiced response to it. The central plot concerns two characters suffering from the disease: Prior, a humble man who is visited by ghosts and selected by angels to be a prophet, and Roy Cohn, an anxious businessman who refuses the diagnosis because he believes only weak people get ill.

At a rehearsal on Tuesday, a few actors appeared to carry the play, notably Belize and Prior played by Huang Zhao-yu (黃兆裕) and Zhang Jia-zhen (張家禎) respectively.

I saw this production more than 12 years ago and although the amateur production does not compare to the professional American company, they make a sound effort, and it is an evening of refreshingly ambitious theater.

Angels in America will be performed tonight through to Sunday at 7:30pm with weekend matinees at 2:30pm. Shows are held in the NTU Theater at 1, Roosevelt Rd, Sec 4, Taipei (台大劇場位置示意圖, 臺北市羅斯福路四段一號). Tickets cost NT$300 and are available at the door or can be reserved in advance by calling (02) 3393 9888.