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Will: We don’t have to talk about it.

Grace: No, we do. I have to. You were tortured. And I never even thought about that. When I got to the part where you write: “Grace, I don’t want to be gay. I just wish I was normal.” …Oh my god, Will. That broke my heart.

And then the part where you said that you were thinking about hurting yourself? I mean, is that true? (Pause) Sweetie?

Will: It was a long time ago.

Grace: Okay, look. This might be 30 years too late. But I just got smart in the last hour. (Audience laughs) You’re right, I didn’t think about your pain. I only thought about mine, because that’s the way the story of the gay guy and the straight girl is always told. Isn’t it?

He broke her heart. Poor her. But you were just being who you are, and you were scared to death that the world was gonna find out and hate you for it.

Will: Wow….You did get smart. (Audience laughs)

Grace: And you were right, it is why I never say “I’m sorry.” And I have been playing the victim. So… I am going to say it now. (Pause)

Grace (emotionally): …Doesn’t it feel good? (Audience laughs)

Will: Still haven’t said it. (Audience laughs)

Grace: I didn’t? Oh! I am sorry. I am sorry for not being there with you. I am sorry, Will. I am sorry for not being there when you needed me most. And I am so, so sorry that I never said this to you before now.

The fact that you are a gay man did not ruin my life. It made it so much better.

Will: Mine too.

Giants In The Sky (Original Version) | Robert Sean Leonard

Into The Woods [Playwrights Horizon Workshop, 14.11.1986]

OH MY GOSH!!!! OH NO!!!! Oh wow he is so………. WOW… He was just talking about, in that TimesTalk interview and others, how he has to work to keep himself separated from Prior, and how his body/brain really feel like they are Prior when he’s onstage, and I honestly CANNOT understand how he can do this all week long for months!

Okay I’ve been thinking about this A LOT and have lots of disconnected thoughts about it and I already know that as soon as I post this I’ll have ten more thoughts on it BUT WITH THAT SAID

We know that Louis is madly and completely in love with Prior. This will literally never ever change. Also, I was thinking about him today and realized that Prior is the answer to Why Does Democracy Succeed in America? because the answer is hope and change, and Prior is literally hope and change personified. It made me laugh, actually, because Louis has been searching for this answer forever but the answer has literally been sharing a bed with him for over four years but I digress. 

I still think Prior has a lot of love for Louis. I think some of the things Prior loves about Louis are the same things that aided in Louis leaving him, like his existential quandaries and how he has a million thoughts a minute and how he’s always tripping down a new rabbit hole of thought. Prior loves Louis for his faults, which is some kind of next level kind of love. We also see (well, at least in the current 2018 revival) a lot of their relationship during other scenes, and by this I mean we see them interacting while a Joe/Harper scene is going on and there is something so tender and sweet in that. I guess that’s a long winded way of saying that Prior never stopped loving Louis either. 

It’s tricky, I guess, because Louis did something terrible to Prior yet they still really love each other and if you think about it (I definitely have) they’re actually very perfect for each other and fit together so well. 

That’s also to say that I don’t think that conversation in the hospital ended on Prior saying “You can’t come back.” I don’t think Louis just left after that. Honestly I think it was just a lot of Louis crying after, just sitting on the edge of Prior’s bed and weeping because really, did Louis expect Prior to just take him back? After everything he’s done? 

But I also think Louis works hard to get back in Prior’s good graces. I think he dedicates the rest of his life trying to make it up to Prior/be there for him/become the better person he needs to be. A lot of his arc is in realizing what he owes to others and what he owes to himself in terms of love and forgiveness. 

That is also to say that I think Prior forgives him. It definitely wasn’t easy but I think Prior eventually forgave him. Demanding more life from angels is easy but forgiving Louis is hard. Prior’s a full blown prophet now who has seen some shit, and I think he sees how much Louis loves him and how much Louis wants to be better so he forgives him. That’s not to say that makes it okay. That doesn’t make it better. Louis still has to face consequences. 

Even though Prior has been blessed with more life, he’s still suffering. He’s still dying. His vision is still going and in the epilogue he wears glasses and has a cane and I think he wants to spend however much time he has left surrounded by those he loves and those who love him, so, despite all that Louis has done, Prior still loves him and wants him to be in his life because he doesn’t know how much longer he’s got and he wants to spend that time with the people he cares about most. Belize, Hannah and Louis make quite a group, but they also are three different aspects of love to Prior. Belize is Prior’s best friend, so there’s that friendship/platonic love. Hannah is like a mother to Prior, so familial love. And then there’s Louis, who was supposed to be the great love of Prior’s life. I believe it’s called “pragma,” what they have. Enduring love. It can’t be romantic because that is the price Louis must pay but that love is still there all the same. 

The world only spins forward, and people change because people have to change. I think Louis worked his way from “you can’t come back, not ever” to the epilogue because he’s changed and because the root of his character is still love, much like Prior’s. I think he’s changed for the better, even though he is still as neurotic as ever. I think Prior has forgiven him, but hasn’t let him off the hook. 

Louis changing and Louis wanting to change is why he’s there and Joe isn’t. Louis won’t let himself self-destruct anymore, but Joe is content to let himself downward spiral. I almost feel like Joe is who Louis could’ve become, and I think Louis knows that too. Where justice and love meet is forgiveness, and if Louis couldn’t forgive himself then he wouldn’t find the strength in him to even stand in Prior’s presence, regardless of Prior wanting him to be there. 

Or maybe I’m completely wrong and it’s just that Louis stuck around anyway and begged and pleaded to still be friends with Prior and Prior was like “Well Belize doesn’t hate you anymore so I guess this is fine”

So basically the whole play is just Susan Brown doing quick changes so she can deal with everyone else’s idiocy and meltdowns as 6 different characters! Many of whom require wigs and wool coats!

played him more sympathetic than others or it’s the actual experience of seeing Louis on stage crying through his lines. You mentioned you had a lot more sympathy for him esp in the fuck you im a prophet scene after seeing it live than just reading it. Not sure how coherent this is I just want to talk about angels forever (2/2)

See, I’m not sure if it was more me or James, because something that really impacts my experience of the play is the fact that I was still just a kid when I first saw and read Angels in America… I was in 8th grade, so around 13 years old I believe… and so, basically, it was just more than I could comprehend at the time, just the fact of the matter is you generally have more simplistic interpretations of things at age 13, and over the years I think I did build a more nuanced understanding of the play, but at that time my instinct was “Louis is a despicable human and I hate him” and I stuck with that. Sure, I loved some of his dialogue and his scenes, and I did enjoy watching him as a character, and I especially did love his early scenes with Prior, but my interpretation of him was firmly rooted in that immediate disdain for him.

I remember watching the HBO series with my college friends in 2016-2017 (so I was 21), and having some more sympathy for Louis than I had previously, and seeing some aspects of his character I hadn’t before, but still I had held onto that total hatred for him for so long, my view of him was still mostly entrenched in that. Like I remember my friend saying she loved Louis and Joe and me being like “WHAT THE FUCK?????!!!!!!!!!”

Fast forward to February 2018, seeing James in previews, and just being blown away by how my instinct wasn’t to hate him… perhaps part of that was seeing him as a literal actual living and breathing and crying human being, perhaps part was James’ performance, which I think just… he made so clear why he was doing all of the shitty things he was doing, and I could see people I knew in him, and I could clearly see his motivations, and HIS LOVE FOR PRIOR!!!! THAT IS SO SO SO KEY!!!!! Because Louis is such a self-absorbed person, and the text doesn’t really give much of him actually caring for Prior, it’s easy to just read him as only caring about himself, especially when you add in his relationship with Joe and how he doesn’t even care enough to ask about his life. But then James just… SO VISIBLY WORSHIPS PRIOR AND WANTS HIM TO BE OKAY AND JUST WANTS HIM!!!! That for me it just… made me really fall into his perspective for the first time… maybe because I love Prior so much and always have, so I was able to understand him from that part of him… To put it simply, it’s not so much that he’s just like “ewww bodies and death and shit and blood and abscesses I don’t want to have to deal with this it’s too hard” it’s more like “Prior’s beautiful body is full of death and shit and blood and abscesses and that is so wrong and I cannot handle that and if I have to watch him die I too am going to die” which is still very selfish, but for me so much more understandable and less completely… despicable.

Another aspect I think James really played up was how much he was missing Prior when he was away from him, like there is some stuff there in the text but it’s very sparse, and often I think can read as more like self-hatred, like “oh I should wish I was with Prior but really I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that” but instead you could really see how torn up James was, in that he wanted to be with Prior but he really physically could not bring himself to see him on death’s door… I think @tomwingfields told me he saw James’ Louis as being so pitiful, which initially made him dislike him, but for me I think that really made me actually feel for him more… his fits of weeping and just generally seeming always to be on the verge of a meltdown, it made me believe that truly being away from Prior was viscerally painful for him, and not just because he thought it should be painful. Like, he still brought out that “it’s like the idea of love when you do it” aspect of Louis, but at the same time… you still knew he actually did love Prior and not just the idea of Prior…

But yeah, I think overall, for some people they instantly feel for him, perhaps because they really identify with him ahem @godlessondheimite, but for others it takes some time to overcome the initial hatred of the awful things he does, to actually sympathizing with him despite the flaws, like you said it took you seeing it twice to feel for him.

Also, perhaps just as important as Louis truly loving Prior was how much Andrew’s Prior loves Louis!!!! Because it can be so hard to see “why does Prior even care what Louis does, he’s obviously the worst human and not a good partner and how could such an amazing and strong person like Prior be with Louis for so long???” but then Andrew’s Prior comes along and is so obviously in love with Louis, and that makes it easier to like Louis yourself, because if Prior loves him there must be a reason!!! Though obviously, sometimes there’s not, love makes no sense, etc. etc. But I think that really helped make me love Louis too, and see him as more of a real person, because Andrew seemed to love him as a real person too, even after all of his awfulness you can see they are still drawn to each other, he’s still jealous of Joe, he still agrees to meet Louis in the fuck you I’m a prophet scene, even though he obviously knows it’s a horrible idea!!!! And he’s even willing to hear him give reasons to come back!!! Which is so heartbreaking!!!! Like, before I always thought “it must be so so lonely to wait to die in bed alone,” but in their version of this scene it’s so obvious that Prior really actually wants Louis beside him, even after rejecting him in the hospital scene!!!!

And even though later, when he realizes he doesn’t need Louis with him, and tells him he can’t come back… even then, you can see how much they still love each other in such a real way… IT JUST BREAKS MY HEART!!!! AND I FEEL FOR BOTH OF THEM!!!! AND THEN!!! In the EPILOGUE!!!! They both are still looking at each other with such adoration… that just… is the icing on the cake!!!! Even after not being together for 5 years, they still love each other so much!!!! And that, I can relate to!!!! And that makes me love Louis!!!! Because even though they didn’t turn back to what they had before and Prior didn’t miraculously get better and Louis didn’t get what he wanted and the world didn’t turn back into his set way of seeing things, he’s still standing by Prior!!! And adoring him!!!!