The Playwright’s Politics
by Ted Merwin & David Zax
The man behind Angels in America and Munich sets the record straight on his feelings about Israel, America and being Jewish and gay.
Tony Kushner has curly black hair, a high-pitched voice and an endearing gap between his teeth. He has barely begun to talk, but he already has a serious, intense look in his eyes, framed by large, round glasses.
His Manhattan office is not much larger than a walk-in closet, but the location, just off Union Square, seems appropriate. The playwright looks at home here, in a part of the city where rallies and political demonstrations have taken place since the middle of the nineteenth century and where radicals of every description have shouted themselves hoarse.
Kushner, 51, is a political playwright. Though he often writes about families (his 2004 musical...