Kushner's Angels in America Part 1 Clip 1

Kushner's Angels in America Part 1 Clip 2

Identity: Ethnicity, Race, Homosexuality

The theme of identity is closely tied to the play's notion of community, since identity groups are one of the types of connection around which communities form. Although we are accustomed to thinking of white people as lacking an identity, in this play all the characters are marked by ethnicity: WASP, Jewish, Mormon, as well as black; in addition, the male characters are defined by their homosexuality. Even AIDS infection serves as an identity type, written into the skin as visibly as race. Identity can certainly have a divisive power: Louis's callousness about race and his suspicion that Belize is anti-Semitic drive a wedge between them, while Prior's AIDS infection is too great a barrier for Louis to overcome. Nor is Kushner sentimental about the ability of identity to connect people automatically, since characters like Roy do their best to deny their membership in oppressed groups (though that denial is erased by his death). But one lesson of Angels is that identity need not be discarded for communities to form—the melting pot need not melt. Despite Prior's misgivings, for instance, Hannah accepts him as a gay man even though she is a Mormon. In the epilogue, the characters are not required to paper over their differences. Quite the contrary: those differences serve as a kind of glue that welds them together. They are diverse yet mutually dependent. (Source)