Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner will take part in a live interview and audience question-and-answer session titled "Dialogue with Tony Kushner" on Saturday, Oct. 11 from 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. in the University of Vermont’s Royall Tyler Theater.
The event, sponsored by UVM’s Department of Theatre as part of the Burack President’s Distinguished Lecture Series, is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. UVM community members can reserve tickets before Oct. 1 by calling (802) 656-0085. Tickets are available to the general public at the same number beginning Oct. 1.
Kathleen Gough, an assistant professor and resident dramaturge in the Department of Theatre, will interview Kushner and moderate the Q&A.
The interview and Q&A with Kushner culminate a day-long series of Saturday events during UVM’s Homecoming and Family Weekend sponsored by the Theatre Department to celebrate 40 years of theatrical production in the Royall Tyler Theatre.
Kushner is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, a seven-hour, two-part epic about the AIDS epidemic in Reagan-era New York, which was later adapted into an HBO miniseries that Kushner wrote the screenplay for.
Kushner also wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's 2012 movie Lincoln. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, Chicago Film Critics Award, among others. Kushner also wrote the screenplays for the Mike Nichols film Angels in America and Spielberg’s Munich.
His other plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Slavs!; Hydriotaphia; Homebody/Kabul; and Caroline, or Change, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori.
His recent work includes a collection of one-act plays entitled Tiny Kushner and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. In addition, a revival of Angels in America ran off-Broadway at the Signature Theater and won the Lucille Lortel Award in 2011 for Outstanding Revival.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Kushner has received an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a Cultural Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement, and the 2012 National Medal of Arts, among many others.
In September 2008, Kushner became the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the largest theater award in the U.S. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock.
Reception and book signing after the event
A reception and book signing will be held in the Craftsbury Room of Royal Tyler Theater after the interview and Q&A. Kushner will sign book versions of several of his plays, including Angels in America, Part 1 and 2; A Bright Room Called Day; and Homebody/Kabul. The books will be on sale at the UVM bookstore prior to the event and in the lobby of the Royall Tyler Theatre the day of the event.
In recent years, the Theater Department has brough two other notable figures in American drama to campus, including Paula Vogel, whose play, How I Learned to Drive, received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics awards for best play. In 2012, the department hosted Charles Busch, an internationally recognized American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator, whose play, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, won the Outer Critic’s Circle Award and was nominated for the Tony Award. Busch received a special award for career achievement at the 2003 Drama Desk Awards.
See a complete listing of events sponsored by the Department of Theatre on Oct. 11.