Award-winning playwright to speak at Power Center

EDITORS: Arrangements can be made for an interview with Tony Kushner. Photo is available on request.

ANN ARBOR—Tony Kushner, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards for his two-part, seven-hour Broadway production of “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” will speak at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28, at the University of Michigan’s Power Center. Tickets are available at U-M’s Hillel Center and through TicketMaster at $8 for the general public and $5 for students.

Kushner also has built a reputation as one of the most outspoken literary figures in America, stubbornly insisting on the playwright’s role as political provocateur. His work, concerned with the moral responsibilities of people in politically repressive times, has led him to observe, “What used to be called liberal is now called radical, what used to be called radical is now called insane, what used to be called reactionary is now called moderate, and what used to be called insane is now called solid conservative thinking.”

Kushner’s latest play,” Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness,” is a compact and quirky exploration of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ruin, both philosophical and environmental, left in its wake.

Kushner also has been working on a film of “Angels” and on an ambitious new trio of historical plays about the “phenomenology of money.”

Kushner’s appearance at U-M is part of Hillel’s Celebration of Jewish Arts/Great Writers Series and is co-sponsored by U-M’s Office of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Affairs.

Tony KushnerOffice of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender AffairsU-M News and Information ServicesUniversity of Michigan