Seven in Heaven: Chad Hewitt as Joe Pitt

1) Who are you? What’s your favorite role you’ve ever played?

I’m very excited to be back on stage after a ten-year hiatus and very grateful that it’s with Vintage Theatre. This is my first full production in Colorado, but before moving to Denver I was active in the theatre scene in Columbus, Ohio.

My favorite role I’ve ever played was Nick in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Similar to my role in Angels, Nick spends much of that play wrestling with ambition, identity, and the uncomfortable realization that the life he imagined for himself may not actually be what the Universe ordered.

2) What is your role and what drew you to this production?

I’m playing Joe Pitt: the closeted Republican Mormon lawyer who could really benefit from some intensive therapy.

Like a lot of gay theatre fans, Angels in America has been on my bucket list since I first read it in college. Ironically, when I moved to Denver three years ago and took a scene study class at the DCPA, the first scene I was assigned was from Angels… as Joe.

There are also some uncomfortable parallels between Joe’s journey and parts of my own life and getting to explore that tension with this cast and creative team has been both challenging and strangely therapeutic.


Joe is a fascinating character because he believes very sincerely that he’s a “good” person. Watching that identity collide with the truth about himself (and the world around him) makes him both heartbreaking and deeply human to play.

3) Why is this play still relevant 35 years later?

Because its ultimately about what happens when reality changes and people refuse to change with it.

Kushner wrote Angels in America during the AIDS crisis, but the deeper question the play asks is timeless: when the world shifts (politically, socially, morally) do we adapt, or do we cling to systems that no longer make sense?

Some characters in the play choose growth, compassion, and movement forward. Others double down on denial, power, and ideology. That tension is still everywhere in our world today, which is why the play still feels so alive.

4) How does Joe interact with the theme of change vs. resistance?

Joe is almost the philosophical opposite of Prior.

Prior’s journey is about choosing life and choosing transformation even when it’s terrifying. Joe spends most of the play trying to force the universe back into a version of the world that makes him feel safe.

His loyalty to institutions (religion, politics, the idea of moral “goodness”) is so strong that it prevents him from actually facing himself. Joe isn’t a villain. He’s someone who mistakes obedience for truth, stability for righteousness, and “cheerfulness” as goodness.

And Kushner’s warning through Joe is pretty clear: when we refuse to evolve, the cost isn’t just personal. It ripples outward and harms the people around us.

5) What moment in the script is most powerful to you?

For me, it’s Joe’s final conversation with Roy.

It’s the moment where Joe finally stops performing and tells the truth about who he is and what he’s done. The tragedy is that the honesty arrives too late to repair most of the damage.

What makes that moment especially powerful is that almost every other character in the play manages to change in some way. They grow, they adapt, they move forward.

Joe doesn’t get that and I think Kushner leaves that unresolved on purpose. Joe’s story ends with the possibility of transformation, but no guarantee of it.

My favorite line in the play, though, belongs to Prior:

“It’s something you learn at your second theme party. It’s all been done before.”

It’s funny, but it’s also Kushner reminding us that history repeats itself (and that we keep having to relearn the same moral lessons.)

6) What’s the challenge—and joy—of performing a six-hour play?

The scale of Angels in America is intimidating at first because Kushner is tackling enormous themes: politics, religion, history, destiny. But what makes the play work is that he explores those ideas through very intimate relationships.

You’re constantly zooming between the cosmic and the personal.

And performing a play this big in an intimate theatre makes it even more electric. The audience isn’t observing from a distance, they’re sitting right inside the emotional chaos with us.

7) Any rituals that keep you energized?

I have a “Joe Pitt” playlist that I listen to on the drive to the theatre to get into character.

Part of my personal backstory for Joe is that as a kid he dreamed about being a cowboy, so the playlist leans heavily into that world: Johnny Cash, Orville Peck, Glen Campbell, Willie Nelson.

Then on the drive home I recalibrate with my trio of blonde pop icons: Britney Spears, Sabrina Carpenter, and Trixie Mattel.

Also at this point my bloodstream is approximately 50% Celsius energy drink.
Blue Razz Lemonade, specifically.