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Video: Tony Kushner talks about Art and Politics
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Video: Tony Kushner talks about Art and Politics
To watch this video you will need Javascript and the latest Adobe Flash Player
BIOGRAPHY
Tony Kushner: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright
In "After Angels," a profile of Tony Kushner published in The New Yorker, John Lahr wrote: "[Kushner] is fond of quoting Melville's heroic prayer from Mardi and Voyage Thither ("Better to sink in boundless deeps than float on vulgar shoals"), and takes an almost carnal glee in tackling the most difficult subjects in contemporary history - among them, AIDS and the conservative counter-revolution (Angels In America), Afghanistan and the West (Homebody/Kabul), German Fascism and Reaganism (A Bright Room Called Day), the rise of capitalism (Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Browne), and racism and the civil rights movement in the South (Caroline, or Change). But his plays, which are invariably political, are rarely polemical. Instead Kushner rejects ideology in favor of what he calls "a dialectically shaped truth," which must be "outrageously funny" and "absolutely agonizing," and must "move us forward." He gives voice to characters who have been rendered powerless by the forces of circumstances - a drag queen dying of AIDS, an uneducated Southern maid, contemporary Afghans - and his attempt to see all sides of their predicament has a sly subversiveness. He forces the audience to identify with the marginalized - a humanizing act of the imagination."
Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. His other plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Slavs!; Hydrotaphia; Homebody/Kabul; and Caroline, or Change, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted Pierre Corneille's The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the English-language libretto for the children's opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film of Angels in America, and Steven Spielberg's Munich. His books include But the Giraffe, a Curtain Raising, and Brundibar: the Libretto, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Oscar nomination, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Award for a Mid-Career Playwright, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, among many others. Most recently, Caroline, or Change, produced in the autumn of 2006 at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, received the Evening Standard Award, the London Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He is working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.
© 2008 Steven Barclay Agency, All Rights Reserved
ON SCREEN
Wrestling with Angels
Tony Kushner was the subject of the documentary film Wrestling with Angels, which premiered on P.O.V., public television's showcase for independent nonfiction films, on December 12, 2007. In the film, Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock followed Kushner for three years, from September 11, 2001, up to the 2005 presidential election, to "delve into the passions that keep him reaching for the great American play."
Watch clips not seen in the film, including Tony Kushner in conversation with playwright Larry Kramer (The Normal Heart), Frank Rich and others at a New York TimesTalk panel, Kushner's 2002 commencement speech at Vassar College and a Q&A he conducted in front of students at Northwestern University.
The Lagoon Movie Theater presents a limited engagement screening of Wrestling with Angels the weekend of May 23-25. Check the Landmark Lagoon website for show times.
American Theatre Wing's Television Program "Working in the Theatre" features Caroline, or Change (April 2004)
The American Theatre Wing's television program "Working in the Theatre" brings together performers, directors, playwrights, designers, choreographers, producers and behind-the-scenes personnel from the American and international theater to offer audiences the opportunity to see and hear people who create theater in thoughtful conversation with one another.
In April 2004 "Working in Theatre" featured Tony Kushner, composer Jeanine Tesori, choreographer Hope Clarke and actors Tonya Pinkins and Veanne Cox, in a discussion about the development of the musical Caroline, or Change and its move from New York's Public Theater to Broadway. The complete program is available for viewing on the American Theatre Wing's web site.
http://americantheatrewing.org/wit/detail/caroline_or_change_04_04
IN HIS OWN WORDS
"A Word to Graduates: Organize!"
by Tony Kushner
Kushner's commencement address at Vassar College on May, 26, 2002.
Playwrights on Writing
"Loss and Joy: Music leavens the agony of an era in Caroline, or Change."
by Tony Kushner
October 31, 2004
LA Times
Continue reading...
IN THE NEWS
Listen to Tony Kushner's PEN PAL lecutre on MPR.
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"Canonizing Kushner"
by Tad Simons, Arts and Entertainment Editor at Mpls/St. Paul Magazine
"From April to June, the Guthrie Theater is dedicating all of its resources to the work of America's most celebrated and controversial playwright; Tony Kushner."
"The public's job: watch, discuss, argue, and enjoy."
Click here to continue reading.