The must-read of the day, the week, the month: Slate’s Oral History of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Parts 1 and 2: “Millennium Approaches” and “Perestroika”.
Kushner’s is the most important and unforgettable voice to emerge in my lifetime. Clifford Odets, who also mixed the poetic with the political, who also changed American theatre (briefly) in the 1930s, giving rise to playwrights like Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, is the only valid comparison to what Kushner has done, what Kushner SOUNDS like on the page. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. There are too many good quotes here to mention but the oral history takes us through the entire history of this astonishing play.
