Few plays of the last fifty years have had the staggering worldwide impact of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. In celebration of the play’s 20th anniversary, the Museum of Performance & Design offers an extraordinary new exhibition, More Life! Angels in America at Twenty.

The exhibition is currently on view and has been extended through August 2011.

Angels in America was commissioned and premiered by San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre Company and produced to mounting acclaim at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and London’s National Theatre. The play burst on to Broadway in 1993, winning multiple Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, among many other honors. An unlikely blockbuster, this seven-hour epic in two parts (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika) took audiences on a dizzying journey from New York to Heaven and everywhere in-between, following a group of unforgettable characters as they grappled with AIDS, identity, community, love, death, and transcendence in Reagan-era America.

Simultaneously hilarious, disturbing, and moving, Angels permanently stretched the boundaries of theatre and elevated Kushner to the ranks of America’s finest playwrights. Angels has since been produced in countless productions around the globe, published in dozens of languages, made into a groundbreaking HBO film that swept the Emmy Awards, and transformed into an opera. Coinciding with the Signature Theatre Company's 2010 Broadway revival, MPD brings Angels back to the city where it all began.

Organized by Brad Rosenstein, MPD’s Curator of Exhibitions and Programs, More Life! Angels in America at Twenty immerses visitors in the magical world of the play, tracing it from its earliest development in Kushner’s notebooks to its premiere in San Francisco, from its triumphs in London and on Broadway to the HBO film, the opera, and the 2010 Broadway revival. The exhibition brings together a thrilling array of original costumes, props, manuscripts, video clips, photos, designs, and other rare memorabilia from key productions of Angels, as well as new audio and video interviews conducted especially for the exhibition with many of the play’s creators and participating artists.

This exhibition and related programming made possible by

Anonymous
Ms. Rena Bransten
Mrs. Elizabeth S. Burnham
Mr. Robert Coombs
Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation
Mr. David Gilson
Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Mr. Edward Kimak
Fred Levin and Nancy Livingston
Ms. Patricia Medalen
Morgan Stanley Foundation
Paragon Real Estate Group
Mr. John Rengstorff
San Francisco Arts Commission
The Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson Donor Advised Fund
Mr. Julian Tomchin
Dr. and Mrs. Raymond Weisberg
Wells Fargo Foundation
Ms. Irene Wilhelm
Zellerbach Family Foundation

and the
MORE LIFE! Opening Gala Committee

Honorary Co-Chairs
Marcia Gay Harden - original Broadway cast member
Stephen Spinella - original Broadway cast member
Joe Mantello - original Broadway cast member

Event Chair
Lisa M. Grotts

Gala Committee
Michael Barcun and Ronald F. Schwarz
Mr. Wilkes Bashford
Alvin Baum
Willie L. Brown Jr.
John and Lucy Buchanan
Richard T. Davis and William J. Lowell
Carol & Dixon R. Doll
Delia Fleishhacker Erlich
John P. Grotts
Senator Mark Leno
Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston
Colin Murdoch
The Honorable Gavin Newsom
John Pence
Cary Perloff
Anika Noni Rose
Charlotte Maillard Shultz
Jo Schuman Silver
Roselyne C. Swig
Tiffany & Company
Wells Fargo Foundtion
Diane B. Wilsey

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