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Cover Story -- Abstract: Tony Kushner, A Soul on Fire
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Danny Monde / New York
Tony Kushner, arguably the most successful serious artist in America today, lives his creative life as if the house were on fire. A televised production last winter of "Angels in America," his most famous play, brought him to an audience vastly larger than any he had previously reached, and he continues to produce new works at a frenetic pace. He also persists in speaking out on a range of controversial social, political and economic issues. Whether he�s questioning or challenging U.S. policy on same-sex marriage, Israeli behavior in the territories -- or himself on any number of issues, Kushner never lets up. And he does it all with a sensibility that is eclectically but overtly Jewish.
Kushner�s new, partly autobiographical, musical play, "Caroline, or Change," has just begun previews on Broadway, and opens at the Eugene O�Neill Theater on May 2. The very next week, a new production of "Homebody/Kabul" opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The 2001 play, which Kushner wrote before 9/11, concerns a middle-aged woman who disappears after venturing into Taliban-era Afghanistan, and whose husband and daughter come to the Afghan capital in search of her. In addition, the final months of 2003 saw the publication of three new books bearing Kushner�s name as either editor or author, one of them a collection of essays about Israel. Another book, of political and social essays, is due out this spring.
The morning I meet Tony Kushner in his surprisingly tiny office overlooking Union Square is cold and sluggish; Kushner, by contrast, is warm and energetic, as we shoehorn ourselves into facing chairs. In conversation, about the new play, about the political and religious implications of "Angels," and about why he thinks that the creation of Israel was not the best solution to the Jewish problem, Kushner proves as eclectic and provocative as he does in his writing...
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