The New York Times: In characteristic fashion, Tony Kushner is doing too many things at once these days, and he’s late with a lot of them. In one more or less typical stretch last month, he was sorting through 60 boxes of his papers, inhaling dust mites in the process; working on a screenplay for Brad Pitt and finishing another, a new version of “West Side Story,” for Steven Spielberg; debating whether to rewrite his first play, “A Bright Room Called Day”; pondering one that might or might not turn out to be about President Trump; finishing the second act of an opera he is writing with Jeanine Tesori about the death of Eugene O’Neill; and vigilantly attending rehearsals of the National Theater’s revival of “Angels in America,” starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, which has moved from London to Broadway, where it opens March 25 at the Neil Simon Theater.
2 comments:
I think Kushner's approach to play writing is really commendable. It makes sense to update one's works as time goes on, because times change and relevance is... well, relevant. To keep one's work up to date and topical is something that all theatre should strive for. If a piece is not relevant in the current time period then why is it being done? This makes Kushner's works have a life unlike other plays that have been the same for decades or centuries. This is the same reason why I do not have much of an issue with (good) adaptations of Shakespeare that work to make his pieces, which are timeless in and of themselves, even more contemporary and relevant than some new works that come out today. I am excited that we might be the first to perform Kushner’s new revision of A Bright Room Called Day. This is what we do here: stay at the forefront of theatre and make it new and exciting.
Kushner's work is truly captivating in it's passionate and full nature. Kushner gives himself over fully to the work which is admirable. He seems like some sort of mad genius. The anecdotes about him writing pages and pages of notes evoke an almost manic picture of a stereotypical playwright in my head. I don't know that I think his ideas about always revising, editing, and working on plays that have been published and found their relevance in a certain era. In terms of A Bright Room Called Day, I don't think it needs to be changed to Trump to hold relevance, socially or politically. The gay community along with the black community are still experiencing the weight of Reganism in the form of AIDS and crack addictions. I think that Reganism is still perfectly relevant and that more people need to know about the mass genocide that occurred during this period.
Kushner's process also seems pretty abrasive and I am not a fan of creative men who feel the need to be abrasive. I think that here Kushner should take a note from his husband and try to chill out a bit.
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