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klaineccfanficlibrary · 3 months

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Hello To All!

Hope you all are enjoying your weekend! I read on my phone and I’m not able to find stories. If there’s a way, please tell me how.

Please suggest adult stories for me with a great/happy ending. I prefer chapter stories of adult Klaine. Any suggestions are welcome. Need something to read tonight. Thank you for all you do!

Hello, when I search from my phone, I go onto our libary blog and into the "magnifying glass/search" at the top. I type in a particular word like "adult" or "enemies to lovers" and then a whole lot of previously recommended fics appear. Alternatively download A03 app, and you can search and filter on it.

Also on AO3 check out our 2023 Klainebingo which has 191 tagged stories written 2016-23 that fandom have recommended - not all adult klaine, but definitely worth looking at.

What I've done is made a list of recommendations here of some of Klaine fics I've enjoyed, where they are adults, or mostly post college age. Some newer, some older. ~ Jen

Seven by @scatterthestars

How far would you go for someone you love? For Kurt, that means doing the unimaginable. But if it means saving his dad, he's willing to take that risk. A risk that has him leaving his home to go states away to spend a week with the last person he ever expected to meet. Over the course of the next seven days, things don't go as planned, or thought.

Can seven days change everything?

~~~~~

Feel my heart's intention by @kurtsascot

Blaine started to hate Kurt on his first day. And it was a shame, really, because they could have been cute together.

~~~~~

Falling for You By @caramelcoffeeaddict Coffeeaddict80

A fic written based off a mash-up of these two prompts from the @gleepotluckbigbang prompt page -- Prompt1: During rehearsal I tripped and fell into the orchestra pit and landed on you Prompt2: I have to share a dressing room with the most obnoxious, self-centered jerk; and when you sent flowers to our dressing room, they took them assuming they were for them but they were really for me Featuring: Broadway!Kurt, PianoPlayer!Blaine, Obnoxious!Broadway!Sebastian

~~~~~

Rock, paper, scissors by @gleefulpoppet

Kurt and his seven-year-old daughter are moving from the hustle and bustle of New York to the Rocky Mountains for a fresh start. On a connecting flight from Atlanta, they meet a warmhearted man who captures their attention with his enthusiasm. Will they ever see him again? And even if they do, how will he fit into their new life?

~~~~~

Nashville! by @hkvoyage

Kurt lands the lead role in a new musical, but it flops during the previews. However, his performance captivates Nashville’s newest country music sensation. They share an instant connection and it grows deeper as they get to know each other. Will Kurt be able to save the musical and keep the man of his dreams? An AU meeting featuring country singer!Blaine and Broadway!Kurt.

~~~~~

Made to keep your body warm by @quizasvivamos

Blaine is a meteorologist who works as a weatherman for a local New York news station where he's especially well-known for predicting storms. But, when a huge nor'easter blows in and the news crew is trapped at the station for three days by snow, can he predict what happens when he meets a young new intern?

~~~~~

If music be by @blurglesmurfklaine

Kurt’s just trying to survive his last semester of college, which means making it through student teaching in one piece.

~~~~~

In my place by @heartsmadeofbooks

Blaine has always been shy and introverted, so after his father dies, he looks for comfort into his childhood dream - owning a bookstore. But then Kurt Hummel walks into his life, turning his dream into a complicated affair.

~~~~~

These inconvenient fireworks by @redheadgleek

After an unexpected Tony award, Kurt Hummel is Broadway's hottest up and coming star, which comes with expectations and some admirers that won't take a hint. When his best friend Elliott Gilbert suggests that they pretend to date to get the leeches to back off, Kurt takes him up on the idea. It's all working out great - until Kurt starts to fall hard for the dark-haired music director of his latest musical.

~~~~~

Scenes from December by @spaceorphan18

An exploration of Kurt's life throughout various Decembers. The story of family and how the definition of family changes over time.

~~~~~

Home away from home by @lilyvandersteen

Cooper buys a hotel sight unseen and asks Blaine to run it for him over the summer. Only, the hotel is a health and safety hazard and Inspectors Hummel and Abrams are hell-bent on closing it down. Can Blaine spruce the hotel up in time and save Cooper's investment?

~~~~~

Living Haphazard by anna_timberlake @shame-is-a-wasted-emotion

Have you ever thought of getting cheated by a house broker and getting to know that you had to stay with another stranger who was also cheated? What if you are getting stuck up with the stranger in the apartment due to unavoidable circumstances? What if you hate him as well as have a crush on him? What if you had to fight your inner self and the stranger? What if he agreed on helping you which can only happen in dreams? This is a real living haphazard, isn't it?

~~~~ Someone like you by @iconicklaine

Kurt and Blaine keep up their very own version of "When Harry Met Sally" for years, a friendship fraught with sexual tension and longing, until the agendas of Adele (yes, THE Adele), a bored NY socialite and a super-sweet hetero couple bring our boys together. The only problem is... they're both in committed relationships.

Note: This story is AU after "Sexy" and assumes Kurt and Blaine graduate from Dalton in the same year. In this future fic, set in 2025, Blaine is based off of Season 2 Blaine. Originally posted on LJ and S&C.

~~~~~

The Journeying By @flowerfan2

Freshly graduated from music school, Blaine is thrilled when he is chosen to stay in the cast when the production of Into the Woods he was lucky enough to be part of in Boston moves to Broadway. He knows it’s going to be hard returning to New York City – the scene of his epic breakup with his fiancé and the emotional meltdown which cost him his place at NYADA. But he’s determined that this time, everything will be different. Little does Blaine know that out of thousands of potential castmates, his director has chosen none other than Kurt Hummel to play the part of Jack. Blaine has worked hard to recover from their breakup three years ago, and struggles to find a new way to relate to Kurt and simultaneously protect himself, especially when tragedy strikes.

This story looks at what would have happened if Kurt and Blaine had reacted differently to the break up in 6x01 than they did in canon; if events hadn’t brought them back together as soon, and if forgiveness hadn’t come so easily.

#klaine fanfiction #fic finder #adult klaine #older klaine

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 4 years

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Tarja on In the Raw (interview by Ethereal Metal Webzine)

With each album, you have grown, gone bigger, and have gotten even better. Did you feel the challenges for this album were easier than previous times or harder? Through the years I have realised that I have become more relaxed with my album productions. This has to do with the fact that I have already pretty many albums behind me and the work including it’s challenges are not unbearable tasks for me any longer. Of course I am always facing new challenges during songwriting and production, but I am not judging myself as hard as I used to do in the beginning of my career. Experience definitely helps and the confidence I have gained as well, but this didn’t happen overnight.

The orchestration in this album is beautiful and I can see this entire album being performed with an actual orchestra. Have you had any thoughts of doing something like this? I have been lucky to work with several symphonic orchestras in my career, so this could be a really nice idea to work on. Anyways, I don’t have any plans for it at the moment.

You had previously stated that this album is the most personal and that you went through some things, such as health-related issues, which led to this album. Would you care to discuss some of those moments and to help listeners understand you and your songs better? Actually I prefer not to bring these issues to the light of day, yet. The music helped me to overcome some of them and understand myself better, so that’s why I wanted to write about these things on my album, but my personal life belongs to me.

Was there any one song that you struggled with or did the lyric writing become easy once started? The lyric writing has never been an easy process for me, nor it was that this time. I had all the doubts of the world around me when I started writing the lyrics, but once I got the first song down, I felt I was ready for the challenge.

You, along with Alex Scholpp, were the main writers of In the Raw. Did you write with anyone else apart from Alex? With Alex I wrote actually two songs on the album as I did with Mattias Lindblom. There are other writers involved who had been writing with me along the years. Those are Julian Barrett, Erik Nyholm, James Dooley, Johnny Lee Andrews and Bart Hendrickson.

Spirits of the Sea was dedicated to the crew of ARA San Juan. Have you received any comments from those close to them? Did you personally know any of the families? No, I haven’t been in touch with the families nor I knew them personally.

I have read elsewhere that the U.S. may be seeing you again with this album. I know you cannot tell much when it comes to touring but, are there any estimated dates at least? We are currently and constantly working on the album tours worldwide, so I have my high hopes that I will do at least some shows in US with this album. Thank you for the patience. In January you will have two special concerts that will be recorded for a DVD. What was the idea behind doing this and also the guests that were selected to participate? I am celebrating my 15th year as a solo artist this year, so I thought it could be a nice idea to have a great party with the musicians that have been working and supporting me through these incredible years. I am not planning to do a world tour with this project, but willing these concerts to remain as something very special and unique. There are no invited, guest musicians in these shows, but a complete line up of musicians who are performing all the songs in the show together with me.

When will we see Outlanders come to life?

Hopefully soon! 🙂 I am recording the last bits and pieces after the best of concerts and my idea is to finish with the production during this spring time. So….I am pretty sure you will be able to hear soon what Torsten and I have been working with during millions of past years.

—Just a few select questions from some of your USA fan club members— Luis: How was the orchestral process like for In the Raw? Which orchestra/choir did you use this time or was it all digitally produced orchestral sounds?

There was no live orchestra involved this time on the album, but we used samples. Aren’t they sounding amazing? 🙂

Matt: Will My Winter Storm ever get an anniversary box set release?

We don’t have that release in our plans at the moment, even though it’s a nice idea.

Shanell: Are there any songs on your list that you would love to do a cover of?

Covering a song is always a huge challenge, because I need to have a reason for doing it. Also in my productions I always want to respect the original song, but at the same time I need to feel the song as one of my own ones, so it is difficult to choose one particular song to cover. I am doing lots of cover songs in other projects of mine, when I sing with the symphonic orchestras for example, so I am not really missing the chance to cover songs for my albums necessarily. But saying all this, maybe you will hear me covering a song for my future record anyways! HA!

Kathleen: What inspires you to write songs? I would love to know what inspired ‘Oasis’ as it is my mother’s favourite song and still calms me today.

Many things are inspiring me to write music. For example my crazy life, things that I explore or experience during my journeys with music and people that I meet with their incredible stories. But also music itself inspires me. For Oasis one of the biggest inspirations was scores/ film music. I wanted to write a song that would make me feel peaceful and calm, no matter there is a storm outside. I am happy to hear that you and your mom can enjoy my song.

In closing, are there any last words for your fans and readers? I want to thank you for the love and support. I really hope to get to rock with you soon with my latest record! Thank you for keeping my storm strong. With love, Tarja

#Tarja Turunen #2020 interviews

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bharatiyamedia-blog · 5 years

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An AI chatbot – TechCrunch

http://tinyurl.com/y43pksm3 Years in the past, a cellular app for electronic mail launched to instant fanfare. Merely referred to as Mailbox, its life was woefully minimize quick — we’ll get to that. Right this moment, its founders are again with their second act: An AI-enabled assistant referred to as Navigator meant to assist groups work and talk extra effectively. With the help of $12 million in Sequence A funding from CRV, #Angels, Designer Fund, SV Angel, Dropbox’s Drew Houston and different angel traders, Aspen, the San Francisco and Seattle-based startup behind Navigator, has quietly been beta testing its device inside 50 organizations throughout the U.S. “We’ve had groups and analysis institutes and church buildings and educational establishments, locations that aren’t companies in any respect along with smaller startups and enormous four-figure-person organizations utilizing it,” Mailbox and Navigator co-founder and chief government officer Gentry Underwood tells TechCrunch. “Just about wherever you will have conferences, there may be worth for Navigator.” The life and loss of life of Mailbox Mailbox, a cellular electronic mail administration system, was answerable for lots of the options each Apple Mail and Gmail use right this moment, together with swipe to archive or delete. It launched in 2013, as talked about, to fast success. On the time, Apple’s App Retailer was a lot newer and there have been few accessible choices for cellular electronic mail, particularly ones that prioritized design and effectivity, as Mailbox did. In consequence, Mailbox, created by a venture-capital backed Palo Alto startup by the identify of Orchestra, exploded. Mere weeks after its launch, it attracted 1.25 million people to its waitlist. Shortly after that, it hit one other milestone: It was acquired. Dropbox paid $100 million to convey Mailbox and its 13 workers on board, together with Underwood and his co-founder Scott Cannon. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, nonetheless years away from main his firm via a successful IPO, advised The Wall Road Journal his plan was to “assist Mailbox attain a a lot completely different viewers a lot quicker.” “That was a really particular time,” Underwood mentioned. “There had been nonetheless lots of alternatives for enhancements for the way electronic mail was getting used on these tiny little units.” Two years later, in 2015, the worst occurred. Dropbox made the unpopular choice to shut down Mailbox, regardless of its cult following, to be able to focus extra by itself core product and the event of different new productiveness instruments. “That was a tough time for us and Mailbox customers,” Underwood mentioned. “It was a tricky choice for Dropbox as nicely … Finally, Mailbox didn’t meet the main target standards for Dropbox and I understood the choice. It was in each sense their proper to do with it what they thought was finest.” Act two A couple of yr later, in 2016, the Mailbox crew had licked their wounds and begun work on a completely new enterprise. Very like Slack disrupted the frequency and effectivity of office communication, Navigator hopes to reimagine conferences, an important aspect of enterprise that’s typically dreaded probably the most. “What we noticed with Mailbox was that basically nice processes had been an efficient manner to assist groups be inventive; but, plenty of groups don’t make use of nice processes,” Underwood defined. “After Mailbox, we actually wished to discover a manner to assist groups be simpler and Navigator is a teamwork assistant whose job is de facto to assist groups principally profit from working collectively.” Based on Doodle’s 2019 state of the assembly report, 71% of working professionals lose time each week due to pointless conferences, most actually because these conferences are ineffective or poorly organized. It is a explanation for frustration and a lack of money and time; in actual fact, Doodle estimates almost $400 billion is misplaced yearly as a consequence of botched conferences. Nonetheless, conferences aren’t going away. Staff in company America spend roughly 5 hours per week in conferences and one other 4 hours per week making ready for conferences. Managers spend double that. There’s a giant alternative right here to leverage expertise to enhance, even eradicate, this ache level. The video conferencing enterprise Zoom, for instance, is hyperfocused on refining the video assembly, particularly for the distant employee. Its recent initial public offering and subsequent efficiency on the general public markets has confirmed its worth and the demand for expertise that makes doing enterprise simpler. Slack’s direct itemizing right this moment, which noticed the enterprise tripling in value at its debut, is additional proof of the market alternative for productiveness tech. Just like Slack, which started as an suave on-line recreation, Aspen has prioritized design in constructing Navigator, the primary of many merchandise it plans to launch. “We approached the issue of serving to groups work collectively as a design downside,” Underwood mentioned. “We tried over 200 completely different prototypes of various methods to encode and distribute finest practices inside a crew. The idea of a digital teammate was the one which lastly started to point out indicators of working.” Underwood says nothing was straight imported from Mailbox, except for a dedication to human-centered design. “We’re fixing a distinct downside however the way in which we’re going about fixing it, in attempting to construct one thing that resonates with individuals, is actually constant,” he mentioned. “As a crew, we appear to gravitate towards these ubiquitous, uncomfortable, painful issues, like electronic mail and conferences, and attempt to construct options that remodel individuals’s experiences of them.” Making conferences suck much less Navigator focuses on crew conferences and one-on-ones, requesting data from assembly attendees earlier than and after the assembly takes place. First, it learns the subject of the assembly from contributors and organizes them into a transparent agenda full with dialogue subjects. In the course of the assembly, employees can use Navigator to shortly seize key takeaways which might be later shared with each member of the assembly afterward. Later, the assistant checks in with attendees to study whether or not they’ve accomplished their duties. “It’s kind of like a chief of workers targeted on serving to conferences run successfully,” Underwood mentioned. “It helps individuals present up. They really feel invited and welcome and like their voice is valued, which modifications the way it feels for them to enter that room.” At the moment, Navigator works with Google’s G suite, Microsoft’s Workplace 365 and Slack. Quickly, it would provide job integration with Asana, Jira, Trello and others. For now, it comes and not using a value because the crew continues to work out bugs with its first cohort of shoppers. Underwood says later this yr they may start to include subscription-based feeds for the product. “Navigator is one other teammate, not one other device,” Underwood mentioned. “It’s about turning conferences from painful, costly wastes of time, to efficient, significant moments of deep collaboration. They’ve that potential. When carried out nicely, they are often exceedingly highly effective.” Source link

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escaperail1 · 6 years

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How one Southern theater won a culture battle but lost the culture wars.

Twenty-five years ago, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America premiered on Broadway, swept the Tony Awards, won the Pulitzer Prize, and changed the way gay lives were represented in pop culture. For a 2016 Slate cover story, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois assembled an oral history of Angels. Now Butler and Kois have expanded that story into a book, The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, out Tuesday. Through more than 250 interviews with actors, directors, playwrights, and critics, the book tells the story of Angels’ turbulent rise into the pantheon of great American storytelling—and explores the legacy of a play that feels, in an era when freedom and civil rights still feel under siege, as crucial as ever.

Much of Angels’ impact was in scores of ambitious productions across the country, far away from the bright lights of Broadway. Putting on the epic two-part drama has become a rite of passage for theaters in cities large and small across America and around the world. In this exclusive excerpt from The World Only Spins Forward, actors, administrators, and journalists tell the story of one such theater that went to court to fight a local government that wanted to shut the play down—and won.

Keith Martin (producing and managing director, Charlotte Repertory Theatre, 1990–2001): We got the rights to Angels in America in 1994, but we produced it in 1996.

Tom Viertel (producer of the Angels in America national tour, 1994–95): We intended to tour in Charlotte and the Charlotte Rep begged us not to come, to let them do it themselves.

Steve Umberger (director of Angels in America at Charlotte Rep, 1996): We were growing. We had done some challenging work, we had just started doing collaborations with the Charlotte Symphony: Midsummer, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, full text, with orchestra, working on a big canvas. Expanding our audiences.

Perry Tannenbaum (founder and editor, Creative Loafing Charlotte): There were only six theaters in the United States that were being allowed to do the show that near to the Broadway production. It was a big deal.

Viertel: They were so passionate about this that we agreed to let them do it. And they did it, and they were all fired. They literally dissolved Charlotte Rep.

Doug Wager (artistic director, Arena Stage, Washington, 1991–98): The 1990s were the peak of the culture wars that broke out with the assault on the National Endowment for the Arts.

Brian Herrera (assistant professor of theater, Princeton University): The culture wars were a tipping point. Up until then, even though there was contestation with the NEA, there wasn’t a sense that it was going to go away.

Wager: The NEA imprimatur is the thing that gives the foundations their incentive. So the absence of that imprimatur gave funders some really good reasons to avoid anything too sticky or controversial, in general.

Herrera: Queer people and people of color became poster children for what conservative America doesn’t represent, like Robert Mapplethorpe and Piss Christ. It was a way of using particular artists to mark a line in the sand and say we therefore do not support the arts. And using the shock of the artists and their work and their identities as proof that they were corrupt and thus unworthy of funding and, by extension, not good Americans.

Wager: All of that was giving politicians—putting them into a cold sweat, and giving them a justification for suppressing, diverting, or cutting federal funding for the arts.

Greg Reiner (director, theater and musical theater, National Endowment for the Arts): In 1992 we had $172 million. And then in ’96 that’s when we lost 40 percent of our funding. This year our funding is $150 million, which is close to what it was in pure dollars, not counting inflation, in the mid-’90s.

Umberger: We didn’t do Angels to create any sort of political sensation. I think Tony Kushner felt … we were the smallest of the companies, and I think he had some sympathy for that. He was also certainly aware of the political climate, and Jesse Helms.

Kevin R. Free (Belize at Charlotte Rep, 1996): There were all these discussions about the New South versus the Old South. Charlotte was supposed to be the New South. The New South was supposedly progressive, more inclusive of gay inhabitants, people of color. The attitudes were supposed to have changed.

Umberger: Charlotte is the largest city in either Carolina. So you have this strange tension between an aspiration to be a “world-class place,” a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot in Charlotte, and a very small-town way of thinking that’s always been at the core: a Southern, conservative, churchgoing sensibility.

Lawrence Toppman (arts reporter, Charlotte Observer, 1980–2017): The boosterish talk about “a world-class city” didn’t reflect reality then or now. Even more than Atlanta, a city Charlotte leaders alternately mocked and emulated, Charlotte was an odd conglomeration of Northern transplants seeking warmer climates, workers imported by banks from other cities, and natives who still thought of it as an overgrown small town.

Martin: It was our due diligence that got us into trouble.

Tannenbaum: Part of what had been recommended was this sort of community outreach.

Martin: We created a series of communitywide education and outreach activities in hopes of shedding light on the difficult issues of the play, rather than heat.

Umberger: All of the events happened so quickly, a week or less.

Martin: The Charlotte Observer went Page A1 with the following headline: “Theater Aims to Avert Storm Over ‘Angels’ Drama.”

Tony Kushner’s seven-hour epic, which Charlotte Repertory Theatre opens March 20 in the North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, has been hailed as the play of the decade, the winner of one Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards as best drama.

It also contains nudity, a simulated homosexual act and adult language—elements that have caused trouble for Charlotte’s cultural organizations in the past.

In one scene, a young man with AIDS takes off his shirt so a nurse can check his lesions. “Only six. That’s good,” she pronounces. “Pants.” The young man drops his trousers so she can continue. He is as naked as the day he was born.

—Tony Brown, “Theater Aims to Avert Storm Over ‘Angels’ Drama,” Charlotte Observer, March 6, 1996

Tannenbaum: The head of the so-called Concerned Charlotteans, the Rev. Joe Chambers, sent a fax to City Council asking for a roll call about who supported this homosexual event and who didn’t.

Tony Kushner: Rev. Chambers was nuts. He had declared Barney the Dinosaur an agent of the devil. I mean, he was a hideous person.

The popular PBS kids’ show character is “straight out of the New Age and the world of demons and devils,” warns Rev. Joseph Chambers, who runs a four-state radio ministry based in North Carolina.

Barney, adored by millions of toddlers and preschoolers, is yet another sign that “America is under siege from the powers of darkness,” adds the politically active Chambers.

And for a donation to his 25-year-old Paw Creek Ministries in Charlotte, Chambers will send you a booklet explaining it all: “Barney the New Age Demon,” recently retitled “Barney the Purple Messiah.”

—Cox News Service, Nov. 25, 1993

Tannenbaum: After the fax was sent out, the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, the City Council, the local attorney general, all enjoined the Rep from opening.

Scott Belford (director of public relations, Arts and Science Council, Charlotte, 1995–2000): It became a rallying point to question freedom in the arts.

Martin: Their lawyers tried to shut us down using the North Carolina obscenity law. But they couldn’t. Works of “intrinsic artistic and literary merit” were excluded from the law. The only legal option they had was North Carolina’s indecent exposure statute, because of the roughly eight seconds of full frontal male nudity.

The cease-and-desist order constituted prior restraint, because we had yet to break any laws. It also constituted an imminent threat, because I was named personally. That allowed me to seek judicial relief from the court in the form of a restraining order, which later was made into a permanent injunction. In six hours I had to find a lawyer, file a formal request, find precedent, a sympathetic judge, request a court hearing, deal with my staff, my board, the cast, the crew, the media, and get process servers.

Umberger: We all knew there was a chance the show wouldn’t open. There we were, at 5 in the green room before first preview, wondering, “What’s going to happen next?” We had worked for a year—were we going to be able to do the play?

Martin: At 4:58 p.m., two minutes before the clerk’s office closed, the judge’s order was signed and filed with the clerk, and process servers fanned out across the county to serve notice.

Umberger: At 5:15 or something, we found out we were doing it. The show was at 7:30, I think. So it was close!

Martin: We served the Performing Arts Center board and senior staff, the police chief, city police department, the county sheriff, the sheriff’s department, the DA and all of his magistrates, even the local and state alcohol and beverage control board, because we had a full bar at the theater and you can’t serve alcohol at a premises with full nudity. Anyone who had the legal authority to shut us down, we got an order against them. We were painting with a shotgun, not a rifle.

Angus MacLachlan (Louis at Charlotte Rep, 1996): We were warned there might be bomb threats, or that during the nude scene people might try to stop the show.

Tannenbaum: It turns out that the Concerned Charlotteans showing up en masse to protest the opening numbered 15 or thereabouts. And the number of people picketing in favor of Angels numbered between 150 and 200!

MacLachlan: It felt like two different factions, like what’s happening now in America. What Trump is doing, what the conservatives in America are doing, but most people didn’t vote for him. We had tremendous support from the community.

Kushner: They tried this direct assault, actually stopping it, and ran right into the First Amendment. I mean, it didn’t work, and in fact made it a huge thing, and everybody with a conscience in Charlotte felt they had to go and see it.

Martin: Opening night, I said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Angels in America,” and there was a standing ovation. We hadn’t even done the show yet!

Be splendid tonight, be focused, have fun, make theater: That’s our way of repudiating the bullies, the killjoys, the busybodies and blowhards. We know the secret of making art, while they only know the minor secret of making mischief. We proceed from joy; they only have their misery.

—fax from Tony Kushner to Charlotte Rep, March 20, 1996

MacLachlan: That night was so electric, and so supportive, it was really about what you wanted it to be about: Kushner’s words, the events onstage. The feeling, the connection from the audience, was everything you want in a theater. That’s what was happening, not the little noises from outside.

Martin: The headline in the papers the next day was “Judge: Let ‘Angels’ Play.” It was a bigger typeface than Kennedy’s assassination.

A last-minute court order Wednesday secured opening night for the tense cast and crew of the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic, which played without protest in city after city until it reached Charlotte. A group of Christian conservatives tried blocking the show over scenes of nudity, profanity and simulated sex.

Even after the legal victory, some expected an outburst during the nude scene, but when Charlotte actor Alan Poindexter dropped his blue slacks and for seven seconds faced the audience naked, no one said or did a thing.

—Tony Brown, Gary L. Wright, and Paige Williams, “Judge: Let ‘Angels’ Play,” Charlotte Observer, March 21, 1996

Belford: The show sold out and extended because it was in the headlines every day and there was so much discussion around it. A lot of people felt they had to see it to see what the fuss was all about.

Toppman: Charlotte Repertory Theatre never did a more accomplished show.

MacLachlan: Tony Kushner came down and saw it. I remember him saying this play has been done all over the world, in very conservative countries, and nothing like this had ever happened.

Kushner: They stopped the plane on the runway and suddenly all these policemen came on, and the stewardess asked me if I was me, and they helped me off the plane because they were worried about a death threat or something. It was nonsense, but it was exciting.

Martin: They picketed every one of the play’s 30 performances. They even showed up Monday nights. The first time that happened, they told the media they had successfully stopped the show. The police had to tell them we were dark on Mondays.

Tannenbaum: We were all very euphoric at the time. It remained, until the company folded, the most staggering hit they had. Eleven thousand people saw that show in Charlotte.

Umberger: The next season, we had a 20 percent increase in subscriptions, and when we polled people, they said it was because of Angels.

Tannenbaum: There was a tremendous feeling that this was a huge opportunity for Charlotte theater to expand. This is [laughs] obviously not the scenario that played out.

Free: I can’t talk about Angels without talking about Six Degrees.

Umberger: We had chosen [John Guare’s] Six Degrees of Separation for the next season. Joe Chambers or someone seized upon that as proof that we were continuing to violate standards, that it was bigger than Angels. We tried to defuse that, say that wasn’t what the play was about.

Free: It wasn’t nearly as good, but it became “Why is Charlotte Rep doing all these gay plays?” Six Degrees isn’t even really a gay play.

Martin: It’s available in the comedy section at Blockbuster.

Kushner: They did what these people always do: The next year they realized a full-frontal assault on civil liberties and freedom of speech wasn’t gonna work, so they defunded the Rep.

Martin: In November of 1996, the Mecklenburg County Commission became dominated by Republicans who had a stealth mission to defund the arts. The “Gang of Five,” led by Hoyle Martin.

Umberger: I think it was on April first. April Fools’ Day. It was a vote to defund the $2.5 million Arts and Science Council. It was funny, because they wanted to defund us because of Angels. But they wouldn’t say, “Well, we can’t give money to organizations that do gay material,” so they had to defund the whole thing, the 30-odd groups that got money from the council. That meeting started at 6 in the afternoon and went until 2 in the morning. There was an overflow crowd. It was a very tense and raucous seven or eight hours that had many speakers for and against. The head of the commission was not part of the Gang of Five. He voted against. Right before the vote he said, “Watch us, and forgive us.”

Belford: It was a 5–4 vote.

Umberger: That was 2½ million out the door.

Belford: The Arts Council funded programs for kids. The symphony. The opera. Just because this one group funded by the council did one play with a gay character in it.

Martin: Hoyle Martin went so far as saying we should ban all works that include the word homosexual, works created by artists who were homosexual. One minister railed from the pulpit about the works of Leonard Bernstein. One said they should ban The Nutcracker because Tchaikovsky was gay. I was “outed” myself, by Republican County Commissioner Bill James, the only one of the Gang of Five who is still in office. This was a surprise to my wife and teenage daughter.

Belford: It was a real wake-up call to the community. A black eye to Charlotte. We’re trying to be a very progressive, forward-thinking city.

Martin: Four of the Gang did not survive the next election cycle.

Belford: After the elections, the funding was returned and increased.

Tannenbaum: There was a dampening effect. It ushered in an era of extreme caution. They actually convened—the Arts and Sciences Council—convened a task force where all sides would be represented and would issue guidelines for arts events in Charlotte. And of course any compromise would preclude events like Angels in America.

Umberger: I was on the task force. Also on that task force was Joe Chambers. Everyone had been invited to the table. All sides.

Tannenbaum: The appeasement from beginning to end of these wackos is really just startling.

Toppman: Charlotte Rep fomented controversy, wittingly or unwittingly, by responding clumsily to the negative comments. Self-righteousness, even when one is righteous, doesn’t convert or engage enraged people. Cowardly, confused politicians didn’t help.

Tannenbaum: It pretty much reaffirms what we’re seeing today in Charlotte. Some little thing, like a bathroom and who is supposed to go in it, stirs up a national furor.

Umberger: A lot of people assume that Angels is the reason Charlotte Rep closed. That wasn’t the reason. It was a supporting factor. People were tired. The theater staff was tired. The city was tired from all of the fighting. I was gone in 2002, and it lasted until 2005, but it happened when the economy was beginning to fail. Charlotte Rep needed another million bucks to keep healthy, but that money was nowhere to be found.

Toppman: No one came out of this mess covered with glory, except the actors and technicians.

Martin: I have almost one and a half file drawers from Angels. Of the thousands of articles, there’s one that’s my favorite, an editorial from March 24, 1996, in the Charlotte Observer. The headline is “Bravo Charlotte Rep.” “In this conservative city, on this matter, that took guts. Bravo.”

Excerpted from The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois. Published by Bloomsbury USA. Portions of the book first appeared in Slate.

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