ThinkProgress: I am the kind of person who once went up to Tony Kushner on a street, introduced myself, and started to cry while telling him how much his work meant to me, so take all that follows with this in mind. But now that President Obama is going to give Kushner a National Medal of Arts “for his contributions to American theater and film. Whether for the stage or the silver screen, his scripts have moved audiences worldwide, marrying humor to fury, history to fantasy, and the philosophical to the personal,” as the official citation puts it, I think it’s important to remember Kushner as more than the author of Angels In America. As much as I adore the two plays that make up that magnificent work, they’re hardly all that Kushner’s ever done, and for anyone who’s inspired by his sharp political sensibilities, it’s worth reading him on a wider range of issues. Here are my favorite of Kushner’s non-Angels works.
1 comment:
In my opinion, Angels in America is one of the most important pieces of American Theatre in the last 20 years. But I agree with this article that Tony Kushner is more than Angles, and if he is going to get an award for his work in the theatre, people should know and understand the importance of more of his work. I have never read or seen any of the plays mentioned, but this article has made me realize that I should make an attempt to become more familiar with the works of playwrights whom I respect for one great work because their other pieces may not be as famous, but they can still be very important or make me look at the world in a different way as the work of theirs that I know has.
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