13 the television of the creators’ childhoods. Even if they were making fun of the corny nature of The Twilight Zone, they felt there was value in the message of breaking off from society as it was valued by say, their parents. The humor, satirical references, and willingness to embrace whatever the“ other” throws at them epitomized the culture of WOW, and the company continues to embrace women’ s stories and push the boundaries of queer drama in their own unique, wonderfully intimate way. Angels in America( 1993) 9
Tony Kushner’ s widely-regarded masterpiece Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes represents an amalgamation of years of conflict, creative stifling, and muchneeded expression in a complex-yet-intimate setting of New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic, which swept the nation in the late 1980s and early 1990s but deeply affected the personal lives of an incredible number of queer individuals in a devastating way that no other recent event could touch( besides, perhaps, on the opposite side of the coin the passage of national laws permitting same-sex marriage in June 2015). 10
Kushner was born in New York in 1956 and raised in both New York and then Louisiana, where his dissatisfied ex-musician parents moved in order to work in the family lumber business. His tumultuous childhood was the mostly the result of his parents’ mistreating and general dissatisfaction with their lives. As an adolescent, Kushner was subject to conversion therapy when his father suspected that he might be gay, and in 1969 his mother was diagnosed with cancer, which ended her careers as both a musician and an actress despite her initial recovery( She later died when the cancer relapsed over twenty years later in 1991, in between the writing of Pts. 1 and 2 of Angels). Kushner moved back to New York to attend Columbia
9 Christopher Bram. 2012. Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America. New York: Twelve. 261-276.
Adam Liptak. 2015.“ Supreme Court Makes Same-Sex Marriage a Right Nationwide.” New
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York: The New York Times.