Full cast and production team have been announced 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. Both parts will open to the media on Saturday, June 28, following previews from 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, 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 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).
Top row (l-r): Joe Bushell, Grant Carriker, Michael D. Graham, Ryan Hake
Second row (l-r): Miguel Long, Nicki Rossi, Renae Stone, Anne Trodden
Third row (l-r): Michael Ashford, Ana Ortiz-Monasterio Draa, David Lipschutz, Rachel Livingston
Bottom row (l-r): Reid Harrison O’Connell, Shane Roberie, Michaela Voit, Brenden Zwiebel
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 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), Tom McNeils (Technical Director), Mark Brown (Production Electrician), Ian R.Q. Slater (Dialect Coach), Hans Herrera (Dramaturg), Becca Holloway (Casting Director), M.C. Dougherty (Marketing Manager), 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.
Invictus Theatre Company has been one of the most notable success stories among Chicago’s storefront theatres in spite of the challenges facing the theater community in recent years. Founded in 2017, they were an itinerant company until the fall of 2021, when they established residency in the former Jackalope Frontier Theatre in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, renaming it the Reginald Vaughn Theatre in honor of a deceased founding member. In that space, they continued to build a reputation for intimate and honest interpretations of classics with fidelity to the original texts and close attention to character development. The company’s extraordinarily successful 2021-22 season netted the company five Jeff Awards for its 13 nominations. When a fire gutted the Thorndale Avenue building housing the Reginald Vaughn Theatre in July 2023, the company was again homeless until early 2024, when they took up residence in the Windy City Playhouse on Irving Park Road. The company’s inaugural season in that space included highly regarded productions of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS, the Chicago premiere of NETWORK, and Shakespeare’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, all of which were Jeff recommended and netted a total of 12 nominations.
TALKIN BROADWAY’s Christine Malcom said of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, Invictus’s first production in the Windy City Playhouse, “In its new, much larger home at the Windy City Playhouse, Invictus Theatre Company loses none of the company's trademark intimacy or power…” The CHICAGO READER said of THREE SISTERS, “the performances are universally first-rate.” Hugh Iglarsh of NEW CITY said Invictus’s NETWORK was a “smart, deeply felt, absorbing production.” Wesley David, writing for BUZZ CENTER STAGE, said THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH was “a potent, intense experience.”
Tickets for both parts of ANGELS IN AMERICA are on sale now at www.invictustheatreco.com.
LISTING INFORMATION
ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES
and
ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART TWO: PERESTROIKA
by Tony Kushner
directed by Charles Askenaizer
June 13 – September 7, 2025
PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES
Previews: Friday June 13 (7 p.m.), Saturday June 14 (12 p.m.), Monday June 16 (7 p.m.), Friday June 20 (7 p.m.), Saturday June 21 (12 p.m.), Thursday June 26 (7 p.m.)
PART TWO: PERESTROIKA
Previews: Saturday June 14 (7 p.m.), Sunday June 15 (12 p.m.), Saturday June 21 (7 p.m.), Sunday June 22 (12 p.m.), Monday June 23 (7 p.m.), Friday June 27 (7 p.m.)
Press Opening PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES: Saturday, June 28 (12 p.m.)
Press Opening PART TWO: PERESTROIKA: Saturday, June 28 (7 p.m.)
Parts One and Two will run in repertory.
PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES will play Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 12 p.m., alternate Mondays at 7 p.m. starting Monday June 30; and Sunday July 6 at 12 p.m., and Thursdays August 28 and September 4 @ 7 p.m. Final performance Saturday, September 6 at 12 p.m.
PART TWO: PERESTROIKA will play Saturdays at 7 p.m., Sundays at 12 p.m., alternate Mondays at 7 p.m. starting Monday July 7; Thursday, July 3 and Friday, August 29 at 7 p.m.; and Friday, September 5 at 7 p.m. Final performance Sunday September 7 at 12 p.m.
There are no performances on June 29, July 4 or 5, or on August 30, 31 or September 1
Performances at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago
Ticket prices: Previews $25. Monday $25. Friday through Sunday $38. Multi-show subscription packages available.
www.invictustheatreco.com
Tony Kushner’s two-part, Pulitzer Prize-winning expansive, poetic, and politically charged look at the ‘80s in America. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell. A single cast will perform both parts of Kushner’s epic play in repertory, allowing audiences to experience the characters’ entire stories over a single day or successive days.
BIOS
Charles Askenaizer (Artistic Director, Director) is the Founding Artistic Director of Invictus Theatre. He won the 2023 Jeff Award (Non-Equity Wing) for his direction of the company’s WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, which also won Jeff Awards for Production of a Play, Scenic Design (Kevin Rolfs), and Performer in a Supporting Role – Play (Rachel Livingston). Other recent Invictus directing credits include: THE WINTER’S TALE, NETWORK, THREE SISTERS, THE CRUCIBLE (Jeff Award Nominations-Director, Production), JULIUS CAESAR, HAMLET, 'NIGHT, MOTHER (Associate Director), THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and OTHELLO: THE MOOR OF VENICE. Directing credits outside of Invictus include TITUS ANDRONICUS (Bare Knuckles Theater), JULIUS CAESAR (Associate Director- Brown Paper Box), THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Reutan Collective) and readings with Chicago Dramatists and Piccolo Theater. Since 2018, Charles has also directed several productions for Invictus's outreach programming in partnership with the Cook County Juvenile Justice System and Lawrence Hall. In 2024, Charles was named one of New City Magazine’s “Players 50 2024: The Rising Stars and Storefront Stalwarts.”
Tony Kushner (Playwright) made his Broadway debut in 1993 with both ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES and ANGELS IN AMERICA: PERESTROIKA. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. He adapted the acclaimed 2003 miniseries of ANGELS IN AMERICA, directed by Mike Nichols, for which Kushner received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie. In 2003, he wrote the lyrics and book to the musical CAROLINE, OR CHANGE which earned Kushner Tony Award nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.
He has collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on the films MUNICH (2005), LINCOLN (2012), WEST SIDE STORY (2021), and THE FABELMANS (2022). His work with Spielberg has earned him four Academy Award nominations, one for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, and one for Best Original Screenplay.
ABOUT INVICTUS THEATRE COMPANY
At Invictus Theatre Company, our mission is to create theatre that promotes a better understanding of language: its poetry, its rhythm, its resonance; through diverse works by diverse artists. We respect the power of heightened language: spoken, written, sung; to express the breadth of the human condition. We work to harness the power of language: to promote diversity, to engender respect, to foster collaboration; and to empower our communities to share their voices.
Invictus Theatre Company incorporated in January 2017 and received its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in February 2017. A diverse group of Chicago actors and directors founded Invictus with the vision to empower their communities through theatrical productions of heightened language. We are committed to the idea that our productions should reflect the communities we represent, and, to that end, we are committed to non-discriminatory hiring practices. In working with local artists, designers, and production teams, Invictus Theatre Company does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, nationality, citizenship, religion, or any other status protected by law.
ANGELS IN AMERICA is presented in partnership with Timothy Sherck. Invictus Theatre Company is generously supported by Michael and Mona Heath of The Heath Fund, The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council.