Kushner, Tony - Natalie Meisner (essay date spring 2003)

Natalie Meisner (essay date spring 2003)

SOURCE: Meisner, Natalie. “Messing with the Idyllic: The Performance of Femininity in Kushner's Angels in America.” Yale Journal of Criticism 16, no. 1 (spring 2003): 177-89.

[In the following essay, Meisner examines Kushner's representations of women and femininity in Angels in America.]

We pay a high price for the maintenance of the myth of the individual.

—Tony Kushner1

It may seem an odd project to focus on the female characters in Tony Kushner's two-part modern epic Angels in America since the plays' action revolves around Prior, Louis, Joe, and the other male characters. Kushner himself notes his plays' specificity by lightheartedly calling them “Jewish fag plays.”2 This is not the whole story, however, as the plays do rely upon complex representations of femininity, femaleness, and biologically female-coded...

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