Cast Member Blog - Matt Winer

Hey there blog-friends. We missed you. No really, we did. Things have been VERY busy on our end. As these words are being typed, opening night looms, only a week away. We've been rehearsing and building and painting like crazy, and very soon we will be showing all of you the evidence of our labors. We can't wait. Have you bought your tickets yet?

Today's cast member blog comes from the extremely talented, attractive, intelligent, and all-around incredible Matt Winer. Read on to learn more about what I... I mean he feels about the show, Fantasia, and the meaning of Life.

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Why thank you for that incredibly nice, spot on introduction, mysterious AC Bloggin' Editor. My name is Matt Winer, and I am playing Louis Ironson in our production of Angels in America. Tonight, I've decided to go in a slightly different direction with my cast member blog. Whereas others have posted about their progress in the show so far, I've decided I want to write about the show itself.

As Marketing and Community Outreach Coordinator for the Student Arts Collective--a very fancy name that I didn't make up all by myself--I talk to a lot of different people about either coming to see the show or partnering with us in some way, because I am a very important person. When doing such a crucial job, it's necessary to be knowledgeable about what you are preaching, otherwise people might think you're talking out of an orifice that ain't your mouth. I like to think that when I discuss Angels, I sound like I know what I'm talking about.

However, when people ask me what the show is about, words stumble out of my mouth like a Frat Guy walking down Sorority Row on a Saturday night:

"Well...there's these four kind of main characters and they... I mean the story goes in and out and how they're connected...and the main-ish character, Prior, has AIDS and... I play his boyfriend, Louis, who can't handle it...and then there's some Mormons, and one's gay and the other is a Valium addict...I mean they're married....oh, and then there's an Angel..."

Basically, I sound like an idiot. But I swear I'm totally not. It's just that this particular play covers so many different topics, has so many interesting characters, that it's hard for me as a child of the ADHD generation to pin down the plot in a cohesive way.

Angels in America is about love, hate, loss, politics, religion, sexuality, struggle, hope, and forgiveness. It's about America, and what America represents. It's about god, however you spell it, whatever language you might pray to it in. This play is about people who are lost (don't worry, there's no Smoke Monster). People who are abandoned. People who create fictitious lives out of lies and desperation to escape from the realities they can't handle.

[I think now would be a good time to let you know that the show is actually a comedy, if only a dark one. Seriously.]

But those are just ideas, right? They're just words. But I'm thinking that's kind of the point. Follow me for a second.

On the front cover of the Angels script, it calls itself a "Gay Fantasia on National Themes". Now, if you're anything like me, you got to "Gay" and you thought, well that narrows it down. Why would straight people be interested? And once you got to Fantasia all you could think of were terrifying (this kid was totally a-scared of Fantasia) dancing buckets and brooms and Mickey Mouse channeling his inner Harry Potter. And if you made it to "National Themes" and you're anything like me, you probably thought, "well, that sounds pretentious". And in a way, Angels is a little pretentious, although in a good way, like a really good indie movie.

But mostly, it's genius.

Angels in America is about life. And I don't mean that in a "the beauty of life and living" kind of way. I mean about Life. Purpose. Being. I apologize for getting hippy-dippy with my blog, but I can't help it, I'm a homosexual actor. For every collapse in Angels, there is a new beginning. For every heart-wrenching or tearjerker moment, there's a heart-warming or hilarious moment. Things are messy in Angels. Sometimes it's confusing and you don't know where things will go next. And as I said before, it's sometimes verbose and pretentious, but there are also moments of honest, unspoken humility.

If I might, Angels is kind of like this blog entry. It's trying to explain something unexplainable. It's a verbose attempt to clarify something complex and sometimes intangible. It's less like this blog entry in that it is a beautiful, touching piece of art that everyone really needs to see.

So, did that clear anything up? Even if it didn't, I hope it gave you just enough of an idea to make you need see the show. Because like life, you can't describe what it is with words. You need to experience it. Just like Angels in America.