tagged w/ Angels in America
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"Tony Kushner's early-1990s play was of its moment, but its influence is felt today in such plays as 'Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo' and 'The Language Archive...'
...None of these dramatists is setting out to ape Kushner. But structurally and substantively they have learned from him. Most impressively, they have found ways of balancing their anxiety of influence (to borrow Harold Bloom's catchy phrase to describe the Oedipal nature of a writer's relationship to his or her predecessors) with their openness to keen sources of inspiration.
These plays, which strive for an elusive ideal rather than settling for a more commercially viable status quo, aren't likely to follow in the heralded Broadway footsteps of Kushner, who has returned there in a major way only once, with the musical "Caroline, or Change." But they attest to the strength of the example set for them.
Fortunately, as we wait for Kushner's latest play ("The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures") to have its New York unveiling next spring, "Angels" continues to surprise us with the vitality of its afterlife. When I watched the 2003 HBO-miniseries adaptation directed by Mike Nichols, I was struck by how well the characters had endured beyond their chronologically specific crises. True, it helps to have an ensemble featuring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Mary-Louise Parker and Emma Thompson, but the roles invite actors to wholly inhabit them with their textured life.
If any more proof of the relevance of Kushner's masterwork is needed, look what's become one of the hottest tickets in New York next fall: the Signature Theater Company's off-Broadway production of "Angels," both parts performed in rep as part of its season devoted to the playwright. The chance to revisit history is certainly one of the attractions, but searing drama is what gets a box office buzzing.""Tony Kushner's early-1990s play was of its moment, but its influence is... more
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"A few minutes before the fifth preview of Tony Kushner’s new play, a three-and-a-half-hour family drama of operatic heft with a matching title — “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures” — Mr. Kushner, looking like a slightly unnerved graduate student, addressed the audience from the stage. Some actors, he said, would be holding pages of new dialogue. “Yesterday was my day off,” he told the audience, “and I did a lot of rewriting.”
“At the end,” he added, “there will be a talk back. You’ll give me your opinions, and afterward we’ll all go out and have breakfast.”
The joke seemed to sum up the state that Mr. Kushner, 52, has found himself in here at the Guthrie Theater, where since April 18 (proclaimed Tony Kushner Day by the mayor of Minneapolis) he has been at the drumbeating heart of a festival occupying the Guthrie’s three theaters and various ancillary sites, celebrating him and his work. That includes the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning epic “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”; the 2001 meditation on Afghanistan “Homebody/Kabul”; and the 2003 musical (with Jeanine Tesori) “Caroline, or Change,” which is being given its first Guthrie production as part of the event.
Sixteen years after “Angels” established him as a major force in the theater, Mr. Kushner continues his surgery on the American body politic in his new play, uncovering with a prophet’s zeal the myths that no longer sustain and the corruption at their heart. Perhaps alone among American playwrights of his generation he uses history as a character, letting its power fall on his protagonists as they stumble through their own and others’ lives. And like a prophet, he wants his listeners to think hard about the world and their place in it.
“The Intelligent Homosexual,” with a cast of 11, including the Kushner veterans Kathleen Chalfant, Linda Emond and Stephen Spinella, is directed by Michael Greif, who in 1991 directed Mr. Kushner’s early play “A Bright Room Called Day” at the Public Theater in New York.""A few minutes before the fifth preview of Tony Kushner’s new play, a... more
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"When actors talk about their big breaks, they tend to talk about the moments when they crossed the ephemeral line where obscurity morphs into ubiquity. Then you have the confounding exceptions, the cases like Patrick Wilson. The actor will be the first to explain (with no shortage of charm and self-deprecation) that his career has been an uninterrupted succession of big breaks—when his college pals were bartending, he was starring in a national tour of the musical Carousel, which landed him leads in The Full Monty and Oklahoma! on Broadway, which led to his Emmy-nominated role in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Angels in America, which led to his stellar turn opposite Kate Winslet in Little Children. Yet to most of the public, he remains as obscure as he was when he moved to New York fourteen years ago. Doubly vexing is that Wilson, thanks in no small part to looking eerily like a young Paul Newman, has managed to date a handful of starlets at the apex of their notoriety (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Scarlett Johansson) without registering so much as a tremor on the Richter scale of tabloid obsession. “Most people outside the business, it’s safe to say, have no idea who I am,” he says. “If I ever get looks on the street, which, for the record, is almost never, it’s rarely because they think I’m someone they saw in a movie. More often someone sees me and thinks, Hey, was that guy my waiter the other night?"""When actors talk about their big breaks, they tend to talk about the moments... more
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Notorious fundamentalist extremist group Westboro Baptist Church led by Rev. Fred Phelps have been told they may be prevented from entering the UK.
Known for their homophobic pickets all around the United States declared earlier this week that they intend to fly across the Atlantic to protest outside a performance of "The Laramie Project" - a play profiling the life of murdered gay teenager Matthew Shepard.
David Henry, director of youth campaign group, Queer Youth Network has contacted local police asking them to consider enforcing hate-crime legislation to prevent the hard-line church from casing a breach of the peace. The group are planning a counter-protest if Phelps does indeed gain entry to the UK. He commented "Our members and local people will make it clear this type of defamation and hate-mongering is not welcome anywhere - and here in the UK we're hoping they won't even get the chance to step foot on British soil". "We'd like to hear the Home Secretary assure people that Phelps will not be granted a visa".
Activists and Youth Groups, followed by local MP Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke, contacted the Home Secretary after she was inundated by emails from concerned constituents, fearing Phelps would be inciting violence against gay people - something that is now illegal in the UK.
Dutch MP Geert Wilders was last week refused entry to the United Kingdom on the grounds that his views contained similar messages of discrimination that could incite incidences of hate crime towards Muslims. As his plane landed at Heathrow he was instantly approached by board officials and put on the next place back to Amsterdam.Notorious fundamentalist extremist group Westboro Baptist Church led by Rev. Fred... more
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