A Study Guide for Naomi Iizuka's "Language of Angels"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Naomi Iizuka's "Language of Angels", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Apr 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780028671208

Book preview

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Language of Angels

Naomi Iizuka

2000

Introduction

In Naomi Iizuka's play Language of Angels (2000), the tragic disappearance of a girl inside a cave in Appalachia is succeeded by a string of deaths as her friends apparently suffer the consequences of that night. A surreal play with roots in Noh drama, Language of Angels challenges audiences with sparse settings, shifting identities, and a nonlinear narrative. Celie, the girl who vanishes without a trace, continues to play a part in the lives of those who were there that night, tormenting her murderer while speaking to true friends in a special language of love and redemption. Secrets, ghosts, and memories swirl around the play's action, casting doubt on what is real and what has been lost with time. Intense, personal, and without resolution, Language of Angels blurs multiple lines, including the one between living and dying. Playscripts published the play in 2001.

Author Biography

Iizuka was born in 1965 in Tokyo, Japan, to a Japanese father and a Latina (American) mother. She received a bachelor's degree in literature from Yale University in 1987. She earned her master of fine arts degree from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in 1992. Her early plays include Tattoo Girl (1994), Skin (1995), Polaroid Stories (1997), and Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls (1999), as well as Language of Angels (2000). Part 1 of the latter play was commissioned by the Mc-Carter Theatre, in Princeton, New Jersey, where it debuted in 1999. The play premiered as a whole at Campo Santo in San Francisco in 2000, directed by Delia MacDougall.

Iizuka went on to write 36 Views (2001), 17 Reasons (Why) (2003), Anon(ymous) (2006), Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West (2010), The Last Firefly (2011), Good Kids (2014), and more. Her plays have appeared at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Soho Rep., the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Dallas Theater Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Geva Theatre Center, among many others.

Iizuka has taught playwriting at the University of Iowa, the University of Texas–Austin, and the University of California–Santa Barbara. In 2008 she became head of MFA playwriting as UCSD. She is a member of the New