Photos: ANGELS IN AMERICA At Invictus Theatre

Production photos have been released 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. Check out photos from the show.

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's 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, seen earlier this year 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 Lipschutz (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).

The production team includes award winning scenic designer Kevin Rolfs, a five-time Jeff nominee who most recently scored two 2024 nominations for his scenic designs of Invictus’s TOPDOG/UNDERDOG and NETWORK. Rolfs had previously won the award for his design of Invictus’s WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Rolfs will also serve as ANGELS IN AMERICA’s Assistant Director. Another Jeff Award winner is sound designer and composer Petter Wahlbäck, a 2024 Jeff Award nominee for his sound design of Invictus’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH. Jessie Gowens, a Jeff nominee for her costume design of Invictus’s THE CRUCIBLE, is designing costumes for this production.

Ten-time nominee G. “Max” Maxin IV is designing projections.  Jay Donley of Violent Delights, who along with his design partner Amber Wuttke, was recently nominated for an Artistic Specialization Jeff Award for his Fight Choreography in THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, will be this show’s Violence and Intimacy Designer. The design team also includes Brandon Wardell (Lighting Designer) and Rachel Livingston (Properties Design).

Completing the production team are Todd Henry Faulstich (Executive Producer), Stacy Scapino (Production Manager), Sam Flipp (Stage Manager), Beep Trefts (Assistant Stage Manager), Tom McNelis (Technical Director), Hannah Andruss (Wig and Makeup Designer), Max Garcia (Assistant Lighting Designer), Mark Brown (Production Electrician), Ian R.Q. Slater (Dialect Coach), Hans Herrera (Dramaturg), Aimee Kleiman (Cultural Consultant), Becca Holloway (Casting Director), M.C. Dougherty (Marketing Manager), Diego Longoria (Marketing Associate), and Ana Schedler (Graphic Design).

ANGELS IN AMERICA skillfully weaves realistic scenes with fantasy and magical realism to examine the social, sexual, and religious issues facing the country as the AIDS crisis gains momentum in the 1980s. Some of the characters are fictional, others are historical figures (Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg), some are ghosts, and some are angels. PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES and PART TWO: PERESTROIKA each won, in different years, the Tony Award for Best Play. Additionally, MILLENNIUM APPROACHES won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Photo Credit: Aaron Reese Boseman Photography