seven years later...

I first saw Angels in America at Charlotte Rep in, I think, 1995. It was one of those rare, actually life changing events, and a real turning point in my thinking about the possibilities of live theatre, and my potential place in it.
About five years later, I got to play Louis Ironson at my alma mater, Guilford College, a year after graduating--it was a hugely terrifying and rewarding nine-month process. Last night, while looking through my script in preparation for this reading, I realized that I still had some notes from the director of that production in my script as a bookmark.
Re-reading them was interesting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that the dates of the notes were exactly seven years ago: the final days of October and first of November, 2000. We were about a week away from opening the play, and only a few days from the night we got out of rehearsal and breathed a huge collective sigh of relief upon hearing that Al Gore had won the presidential election. Of course, the next morning everything had changed. We kept on going, of course, despite the gloom that has suddenly descended, trying to face Bad News like the most generous of the characters we were playing on stage, with varying degrees of success.
Now, seven years later, Bush is somehow still president, pessimism and cynicism abound, and here we are about to spend a week sinking our teeth into this nearly twenty year old play set during the Reagan administration. I think Kushner's insistence on hope and beauty in the face of destruction and despair still offer a powerful tool to all who ache for change and realize that (as Amanda points out above) for better or worse, the world only spins forward. I'm sorry I will have to miss the WNCAP discussion on Monday evening. I'm glad it is happening.
One final thing: on a personal note, it is remarkably easy for me to see some good in the last seven years, and to wonder at the tricks of universal timing. The final performance of Millennium Approaches at NCSC will be on November 11th, seven years to the day since a casual acquaintance of mine saw me in the same play at Guilford and decided, at some point during the performance, to call me up for a date. This November 11th, she will again be in the audience - this time not as a relative stranger, but as my closest partner; my wife. And I will again be on stage, feeling so very grateful for the opportunity to work on this play that has helped mark some of the most important personal and professional milestones in my life thus far, as well as national and global ideas, events, and confrontations.
I am super excited about being part of this reading. I've wanted to work with many of these actors for a long time, and some of them were involved with that first Angels I saw in Charlotte twelve years ago. I'm glad that these words will again be spoken aloud, and will again challenge and encourage each of us to find the good, to hold stubbornly to truth, and to actively, aggressively create Hope.