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In the Kushner zone
by Rohan Preston, Star Tribune
I asked a director a few years ago what the best part of staging a play by Shakespeare was. His answer was quick: "The playwright is dead."
While some directors may view a playwright in the rehearsal room as meddlesome -- particularly a scribe of some renown -- the four actors in the collection of Tony Kushner's short plays were wowed by his presence last week. That's when Kushner showed up for the first run-through of "Tiny Kushner," five short works that preview Saturday as part of the Guthrie Theater's Kushner festival.
Two of the playlets have been produced before, including one in the late 1990s at the former Guthrie Lab. The three new ones were first written as obituaries for the New York Times Magazine and are based on real people.