Stage Write

  Bard Fest, Indy's only annual Shakespeare Festival, is producing the epic two-play cycle of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-prize-winning Angels in America. They will present Part One - Millennium Approaches and Part Two - Perestroika in rotation throughout the month. In anticipation of its landmark June premier, some of the cast of Angels in America (AIA) answered some questions about the show. Q: What themes does Shakespeare’s work share with Angels in America? A: Matt Anderson (Louis): Many of Shakespeare’s works are so sweeping and encompassing, stretching out for hours and taking time to delve into love, politics, relationships, self-worth, life and death, prejudices and pain, blood and ghosts, hilarity and horror, the mundanely real and the confoundingly supernatural… and Angels in America explores deeply all of those themes and more. Mira Nehrig (Harper Pitt): Oh, truly, there are so many. Shakespeare would grapple with politics, gender dynamics, and family within one play (wheth...

  What matters most, the creative process or just the facts? That’s the question debated in The Lifespan of a Fact, on stage now at the Phoenix Theatre. In this latest production from American Lives Theatre, audiences can dive deep into journalistic integrity. This Indiana premiere is a firecracker of a show. It clocks in at less than 90 minutes with no intermission and not a moment is wasted. Director Chris Saunders keeps the momentum going between each scene with tight dialogue or occasionally just a pointed look. The tension is taut and the minutes fly by. Despite the serious subject matter, the show is infused with humor. As a magazine staff works towards a tight deadline and a fact checker begins to see some cracks in a well-written article on suicide, the fuse is lit for a confrontation. Eva Patton is the authoritative, no-nonsense editor trying to wrangle a writer’s ego and an intern’s black-and-white worldview. Joe Wagner is all earnestness and naïveté as Jim the intern. ...