The Story of ANGELS IN AMERICA Will Be Told in New Book, THE WORLD ONLY SPINS FORWARD

On February 14, Bloomsbury USA will release The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America- the oral history of Angels in America, as told by the artists who created it and the audiences forever changed by it--a moving account of the AIDS era, essential queer history, and an exuberant backstage tale.

When Tony Kushner's Angels in America hit Broadway in 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize, swept the Tonys, launched a score of major careers, and changed the way gay lives were represented in popular culture. Mike Nichols's 2003 HBO adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Mary-Louise Parker was itself a tour de force, winning Golden Globes and eleven Emmys, and introducing the play to an even wider public. This generation-defining classic continues to shock, move, and inspire viewers worldwide.

Now, on the 25th anniversary of that Broadway premiere, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois offer the definitive account of Angels in America in the most fitting way possible: through oral history, the vibrant conversation and debate of actors (including Streep, Parker, Nathan Lane, and Jeffrey Wright), directors, producers, crew, and Kushner himself. Their intimate storytelling reveals the on- and offstage turmoil of the play's birth--a hard-won miracle beset by artistic roadblocks, technical disasters, and disputes both legal and creative. And historians and critics help to situate the play in the arc of American culture, from the staunch activism of the AIDS crisis through civil rights triumphs to our current era, whose politics are a dark echo of the Reagan '80s.

Expanded from a popular Slate cover story and built from nearly 250 interviews, The World Only Spins Forward is both a rollicking theater saga and an uplifting testament to one of the great works of American art of the past century, from its gritty San Francisco premiere to its starry, much-anticipated Broadway revival in 2018.

Click here to pre-order the book today and here to listen to a sneak peek from NPR.

Angels in America is on its way to Broadway and its star, Andrew Garfield, is getting ready for his return to the New York City stage! watch as he talks with Jimmy Fallon about the transformative and inspirational nature of the play.

Directed by two-time Tony Award winner Marianne Elliott, Angels in Americastars two-time Tony Award winner Nathan Lane and Academy Award and Tony Award nominee Andrew Garfield, and will also feature Susan Brown, Denise Gough, Amanda Lawrence, James McArdle, Lee Pace, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Beth Malone, Rowan Ian Seamus Magee, Matty Oaks, Jane Pfitsch, Ron Todorowski, Silvia Vrskova, Lucy York, Patrick Andrews, Glynis Bell, Amy Blackman, Curt James, Mark Nelson, Genesis Oliver, and Lee Aaron Rosen.

Returning to Broadway for the first time since its now-legendary original production opened in 1993, this spectacular new staging of Part One of Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, and of Part Two, Perestroika, directed by Marianne Elliott, had its world premiere earlier this year in a sold-out run at the National Theatre, where it became the fastest selling show in the organization's history.

A quarter-century after stunning the theater world, one of the greatest theatrical journeys of our time returns to Broadway in an acclaimed new production from the National Theatre. As politically incendiary as any play in the American canon, Angels in America also manages to be, at turns, hilariously irreverent and heartbreakingly humane. It is also astonishingly relevant, speaking every bit as urgently to our anxious times as it did when it first premiered. Tackling Reaganism, McCarthyism, immigration, religion, climate change, and AIDS against the backdrop of New York City in the mid-1980's, no contemporary drama has succeeded so indisputably with so ambitious a scope.