Throughline Theatre Begins 2014 Season with Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA, 6/6-14

Throughline Theatre Company opens fifth season with Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, June 6, 2014 at the Grey Box Theatre in Lawrenceville. 2014 Season highlights plays focused on "Mortality and Divinity."

In the Middle of the 1980s, the Reagan Administration is in full swing, America searches for its own identity in the waning years of the Cold War, and the AIDS crisis has the nation's Gay Community in its grip. Against this backdrop, Tony Kushner sets his epic story of Love, Politics, Sickness, and Faith.

Lovers wrestle with abandonment in the face of the bleak reality of disease, conservative power players struggle with the truth of their own sexuality, and a devoutly religious family is crushed under the weight of repression, addiction, and lies. As these strangers are brought together by chance encounters and a common syndrome, hallucinations overlap, ghosts from the past visit their one-time persecutors, and a Messenger appears to a dying man with a frightening but hopeful vision of the way forward.

Angels in America is the first production in Throughline Theatre's fifth season, and is the company's most ambitious project to date. Told in two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, the story is gargantuan in scope and bends time and space to blend intense realism with a beautifully poetic abstract style. Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards for Best Drama, Angels in America stands alone as the most important play of the second half of the 20th Century. Directed by Stephen Santa and featuring an outstanding group of local actors, Throughline Theatre's presentation marks the first time in Pittsburgh that the play will be offered in its entirety as a simultaneous production, with both parts performed in the same run, including both on the same day, with a single cast.

Throughline Theatre Company's four-show season focuses on the relationship between past, present, and future by presenting plays from varied time periods and arranging them to highlight their thematic and stylistic similarities. The throughline for the 2014 season is "Mortality and Divinity," focusing on plays that examine our society's concept of what it means to be Human or to be God and our perceptions of the relationship between the two.

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches opens Friday, June 6, at 8pm and continues Saturday, June 7 at 2pm and 8pm. The opening night performance will be followed by a reception where food and drinks will be provided and audience members can meet the cast. Angels in America: Perestroika will run Thursday, June 12 and Friday, June 13 with performances at 8pm. Saturday, June 14, there will be a special performance of both plays Millennium Approaches at 2pm and Perestroika 8pm. Between the two performances there will be a celebration of Throughline Theatre's Fifth Birthday at Del's Bar & Ristorante in Bloomfield.

Tickets for any single performance are $15 or $12 for students and seniors. Tickets for the Opening Night Reception are an additional $10. Tickets for the special performances on June 14 are $35 for one performance and the celebration at Del's or $50 for both performances and the celebration. Tickets are available at the door or in advance online at throughlinge.showclix.com. Angels in America contains adult content, and is intended for mature audiences. No one under the age of 18 will be admitted without a parent or legal guardian.

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