On a wing and a prayer: Forum Theatre presents ‘Angels in America’

Michael Dove is nine days away from the premiere of the most ambitious project his Forum Theatre company has ever undertaken. But on this rainy Saturday morning, he’s got more pressing problems — like getting his voicemail to work.

On Oct. 5, the troupe will open its production of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 play, “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.” Forum will tackle the second half of Kushner’s epic, subtitled “Perestroika,” beginning the last week of October. (Dove is directing “Perestroika,” while Jeremy Skidmore is helming “Millennium Approaches.”) The two parts will be performed in repertory through Nov. 22, offering audiences the rare chance to experience Kushner’s sprawling, seven-hour saga of AIDS in the Reagan era in a single day. (Or separately, of course.)

Getting two long shows on their feet concurrently would be taxing enough. But Dove and his associates also have a relocation in progress. Forum will play at least its sixth and seventh seasons at Round House Theatre in Silver Spring, next to the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre.

The new digs come courtesy of Round House Producing Artistic Director Blake Robinson, who called Dove with the invitation, seeking, Dove said, “a more experimental, edgier resident company” in Silver Spring. “We [at Forum] actually debated it, because we were worried that moving to the suburbs might make us lose our indie cred.”

When Forum announced it would tackle “Angels,” they’d assumed the venue would be the H Street Playhouse, where the troupe staged such cerebral fare as “Marat/Sade,” “Marisol” and “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.” The latter two shows, especially, pulled off gritty, Earthbound explorations of metaphysical concerns, suggesting that despite its hand-to-mouth finances, Forum might be the D.C.-area company best suited to offer a fresh take on Kusher’s opus.

Dove and company member Alexander Strain — who plays Louis in the show — had discussed taking a run at it for years. Then Dove read Michael Kaiser’s “The Art of the Turnaround,” which encourages arts organizations to respond to fiscal pain by aiming higher rather than cutting back. He decided to follow Kaiser’s advice.

“We’re a nonprofit theater company where the entire staff is volunteers,” Dove said. “It’s not like we’re making money at this anyway. People go to theater for big, ambitious ideas, and we need to make sure we keep giving them that.”

While doing the shows in rep is a pricey, complicated proposition, Dove maintains that their low-fi aesthetic will be in the spirit of Kushner’s vision. “Angels” was puffed up for Broadway, and became a relatively visual effects-heavy HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. But its original stage incarnations were modest.

He points to Kushner’s introduction, which states the play ought to have a rough quality. He also has it on good authority that the NYU space where “Perestroika” was workshopped was no larger than Round House: Tony Cisek, who designed the set for Forum, also designed the NYU workshop production in the early 1990s, a fact Dove and Skidmore didn’t discover until after they’d hired him.

Dove grew up in Staunton, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley He first encountered Kushner’s two-part Tony winner when he was given a copy by his mother, a high school English teacher who taught Shakespeare.

“I don’t think she knew what she was buying,” Dove laughs. “I grew up in a Pentecostal, evangelical household.” In other words, a complex meditation on AIDS and issues of gay identity was an unlikely pick for her recommended reading list.

“I felt dirty reading it. We didn’t know any homosexuals in Staunton,” he recalls. “I know it’s a cliche, but I thought, ‘Oh, this is what theater can be.”