Meet the Angels in America Cast at Invictus Theatre

 Full cast and Production Team have been revealed for Invictus Theatre’s production of Tony Kushner’s monumental two-part play, ANGELS IN AMERICA, with a single cast performing both parts of the play in repertory.  Previews begin on June 13 (PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES) and June 14  (PART TWO: PERESTROIKA). The performance schedule (detailed below) will allow audiences to see the two parts in sequence on the same day, or on successive days. The final performance of MILLENNIUM APPROACHES will be on Saturday, September 6 at 12 p.m. and the final performance of PERESTROIKA will be Sunday, September 7 at 12 p.m. Invictus Artistic Director Charles Askenaizer is directing both parts of the drama, set in New York City in the mid-1980s as the AIDS epidemic was becoming widespread.
 
Askenaizer cast includes Michael D. Graham, a 2025 Jeff Award winner for his direction of the play LIGHT SWITCH with Open Space Arts, as the real-life New York lawyer and powerbroker, Roy Cohn, a closeted gay man who disavows other gays and cares only about amassing clout. Cohn becomes a bad influence on Joe Pitt, a Mormon, Republican lawyer struggling with his own sexual identity. Joe Pitt will be played by Joe Bushell, seen this past season in DAMES AT SEA with Citadel Theatre. Cast as Prior Walter, a young man who has contracted AIDS, is Ryan Hake (SEVEN MINUTES TO LIVE, Chicago Dramatists). Playing Louis Ironson, an anxious and verbose man who, at the start of the play, breaks off his relationship with Prior out of fear of Prior’s infection, is Grant Carriker, Jeff Award-nominated this year for his role in Tony Kushner’s A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY with Blank Theatre Company.
 
The nurse Belize, who cares for both Prior Walter and Roy Cohn when they are hospitalized for AIDS, will be Miguel Long. Long appeared in MEDEA MATERIAL with Trap Door Theatre last fall. Joe Pitt’s wife, Harper Pitt, will be played by Anne Trodden, seen last year as the ambitious TV executive Diana Christensen in Invictus’s NETWORK. Joe Pitt’s mother Hannah Pitt, a devout Mormon who moves to New York from Utah when she learns of her son’s marital trouble, will be portrayed by Renae Stone, of Invictus’s THREE SISTERS. Nicki Rossi (MADAM AND STEVE at Greenhouse Theatre Center) will appear as The Angel, an imposing, terrifying, divine presence who descends from Heaven to bestow prophecy on Prior. 
 
Understudies are Shane Roberie (Roy Cohn), Brenden Zwiebel (Prior Walter), David Lipschitz (Louis Ironson), Reid Harrison O’Connell  (Joe Pitt), Rachel Livingston (Harper Pitt), Michael Ashford (Belize), Ana Ortiz-Monasterio Draa (Hannah Pitt), and Michaela Voit (The Angel).