NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Tony Kushner, a playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards for his two-part stage work "Angels in America" and critical acclaim for his prescient "Homebody/Kabul," which explores geopolitics in Afghanistan, will appear at Vanderbilt University for an upcoming address.
Terryl Hallquist, associate professor of theatre at Vanderbilt, will conduct "A Conversation with Tony Kushner" on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 6 p.m. in Benton Chapel at the Vanderbilt Divinity School. A reception with Kushner will precede the lecture at 5 p.m. in the Divinity School Faculty Reading Room. Both events are free and open to the public and sponsored by Vanderbilt’s Chancellor’s Lecture Series.
Kushner is a playwright known for marrying personal and political themes in his work. His 1993 play "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" is set in 1986 and explores how AIDS, at the height of the epidemic, affects the intertwining lives of a handful of people. The characters’ personal stories are set against the demise of communism and the unraveling of Reaganism. At the time "Angels in America" appeared, the New York Times said of Kushner, "Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theatre. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both."
Kushner has adapted "Angels in America" into a screenplay for HBO Films. The pay-television channel will air the six-hour film version, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson, in December.
The Obie Award-winning "Homebody/Kabul" is set in 1998 and centers on the disappearance in Afghanistan of an eccentric British woman (the Homebody) and the search for her by her husband and daughter. The play examines current day Afghanistan, its history, its long and tortured relationship with the West and its current political and humantarian crisis. Kushner, a diehard socialist who has been interested in Afghanistan since the Soviets invaded, wrote "Homebody/Kabul" before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The play had an eerily timely opening in New York in December 2001 and has since been staged in London and by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Monsoon Wedding director Mira Nair plans to adapt "Homebody/Kabul" for film.
In addition to his work in theatre, Kushner is the author of numerous essays on topics such as bigotry, war, faith, death and love. A native of Lake Charles, La., he received a bachelor of arts degree from Columbia University and master of fine arts degree in theatre from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Kushner’s appearance is part of the ongoing Chancellor’s Lecture Series at Vanderbilt. The Chancellor’s Lecture Series serves to bring to the University and the wider Nashville community those intellectuals who are shaping the world today. For more news about Vanderbilt, visit the Vanderbilt News Service homepage at www.vanderbilt.edu/news.
Media contact: Kara Furlong, (615) 322-NEWS
Kara.c.furlong@vanderbilt.edu