Dramatic Analysis Questionnaire – Angels in America

  1. What are the different plots/stories that this play explores?

How do their relationships to each other change over the course of the play? (character involvement, plot linkages, etc.)

The plots of the play focus on two relationships in the beginning; Harper and Joe share a very unhealthy marriage. Harper sits at home daily staying high on pills, making up imaginary friends or dangerous men with knives in her bedroom. Joe is a hardworking Mormon who tries to abide by the strict rules of his religion and seems very distant from most of his family or friends. Then there’s the relationship between partners, Louis and Prior. They seem to have a healthy relationship in the beginning until Prior exposes his lesion and reveals to his lover that he is dying. As the play progresses, both relationships get worse. Joe slowly comes to the realization that he is homosexual, and his wife’s mental health is poorer every day. As Prior’s disease takes over, Louis finds he cannot deal with watching his lover die and leaves him. Prior and Harper link to each other because they are both very ill, mentally and/or physically and are deeply in love with their partners. Joe and Louis link together because they both struggled with their partner’s illness but eventually left them in the end.

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  1. How do the kinds of scenes we see reflect the changing relationship of the plots?

How do the scene types reflect ideas explored by the play?

This play follows an episodic structure seeing that each scene switches from place to place multiple times. For instance, act 3 scene 1 takes place in Prior’s bedroom at his apartment. Then the very next scene switches to a coffee shop/outpatient clinic at the hospital. French scenes occur in the play as well. Every time the ancestors of Prior appear, significant information is discovered and new intentions are created.

  1. What purposes ...

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