mag
Heeb Issue #4 : InterviewStaging Change
The Revolutionary Rigor of Tony Kushner
(excerpted from original article)
Kushner’s combination of exacting political analysis and broad artistic vision first earned him wide acclaim in 1993 and 1994 with his play Angels In America. That massive, two-evening epic about AIDS, Reaganism, illness and betrayal led to a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony awards, an upcoming HBO adaptation—and a lifetime supply of daunting expectations. Following the success of Angels, Kushner became America’s leading left-wing gay pundit, tapped by Newsweek, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Advocate to hold forth on issues from homophobia to socialism. But his subsequent ventures on the dramatic front were comparatively diminutive: a slender rumination on the failures of Soviet Communism, an adaptation of Brecht’s The Good Person of Sezuan, and another of the Yiddish theater classic The Dybbuk. Some friends grew concerned that he was using essays and college speaking tours as ways to avoid writing another ambitious play.
Those worries were swept away in December 2001, when Homebody/Kabul, Kushner’s nearly four-hour journey through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, opened at the New York Theater Workshop. Written over a five-year period, Homebody/Kabul had the dubious fortune of opening scant months after the 9/11 attacks and Bush’s military campaign against the Taliban. It re-established Kushner as a playwright of determined political relevance and generous global sympathies. Today, Kushner’s plate is overflowing with projects. In addition to the anthology and his frequent anti-war stump speeches, he’s preparing a musical about his Louisiana childhood (_Caroline, or Change_) to open at the Public Theater in September, polishing off a substantial revision of Homebody, and writing a new play, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Will Be Unhappy, part of which was published in The Nation this spring.
Kushner’s combination of exacting political analysis and broad artistic vision first earned him wide acclaim in 1993 and 1994 with his play Angels In America. That massive, two-evening epic about AIDS, Reaganism, illness and betrayal led to a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony awards, an upcoming HBO adaptation—and a lifetime supply of daunting expectations. Following the success of Angels, Kushner became America’s leading left-wing gay pundit, tapped by Newsweek, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Advocate to hold forth on issues from homophobia to socialism. But his subsequent ventures on the dramatic front were comparatively diminutive: a slender rumination on the failures of Soviet Communism, an adaptation of Brecht’s The Good Person of Sezuan, and another of the Yiddish theater classic The Dybbuk. Some friends grew concerned that he was using essays and college speaking tours as ways to avoid writing another ambitious play.
Those worries were swept away in December 2001, when Homebody/Kabul, Kushner’s nearly four-hour journey through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, opened at the New York Theater Workshop. Written over a five-year period, Homebody/Kabul had the dubious fortune of opening scant months after the 9/11 attacks and Bush’s military campaign against the Taliban. It re-established Kushner as a playwright of determined political relevance and generous global sympathies. Today, Kushner’s plate is overflowing with projects. In addition to the anthology and his frequent anti-war stump speeches, he’s preparing a musical about his Louisiana childhood (_Caroline, or Change_) to open at the Public Theater in September, polishing off a substantial revision of Homebody, and writing a new play, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Will Be Unhappy, part of which was published in The Nation this spring.
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