the perfectionist: an interview with playwright tony kushner

08.04.2013 Views
14 Tony Kushner probably needs no introduction. On a muggy afternoon in June, 2008, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright sat down with a Contemplate editor in his small, well-furnished office overlooking Manhattan’s Union Square. Kushner’s plays express his politics, and his politics are firmly rooted in the Jewish progressive tradition, so it made sense to begin the interview with Kushner’s Jewish upbringing in Louisiana. From there, the conversation roamed between politics and theatre, Israel and the U.S., Brecht and Philip Roth. A question about Judaism led to a definition so concise it would make Hillel proud. Kushner also mused on whether age—he was about to turn 52—had tempered his radicalism. Excerpts from the 90-minute interview follow. Contemplate: There’s a way in which one becomes a Jew-by-osmosis living in New York City. But you’re a New York Jew by way of Louisiana, where you were raised in a progressive, non-religious Jewish family. Where did you absorb so much Jewishness? Tony Kushner: Well, I obviously absorbed a certain amount as a child. My parents were not religious people; my mother had really nothing much more than an emotional/sentimental attachment to Judaism. I think that my sense of the importance of being Jewish was sharpened by the fact that I grew up as part of a very small minority within an entirely Christian community. It would have been possibly a different thing had I grown up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. You seem to articulate your Jewishness in two ways—through your activism, but also through a deep, almost omnivorous interest in Jewish people, history, and issues. I’m not sure what to say, except…Jews are very interesting. I mean, I don’t know how you justify it. I call myself an agnostic—and I think that’s a pretty good description of what I am. In terms of theology…I’m probably kidding myself. But it’s an interesting thing—there’s a level of comfort, a sense of belonging, that is only touched on in the company of other Jews. I’m speaking personally now, but I think this is something that a lot of Jews share. For secular Jews in the United States, especially, there may be a need, a hunger, that you’re not even particularly aware exists until you find yourself in the company of a lot of other Jews. That sounds almost Jungian. Do you believe in a Jewish consciousness—or unconscious? People carry history within themselves, so if you want to call that a collective unconscious, you can do that; it’s a little mystical to me, I think it’s got more material sources. You’re the receiver of a history. And you carry that within you, and transform it within yourself.

I know that you’re the type of Jew who cherishes stuff. It’s not that I don’t take that stuff seriously. It’s certain Jewish traditions that comport with your values, and jettisons other traditions. Which tra- just that that’s the stuff I’m most uncertain about. ditions do you keep? Which haven’t you kept? You’ve embraced the label “Jewish writer,” when There are traditions, like homophobia and misog- as far as I can tell, what Jewish writers most have in yny, that I categorically reject. There are traditional common is a disdain for the label “Jewish writer.” attitudes about, for instance, in- I don’t think all Jewish writers. termarriage, that I reject. But I Would Malamud have bristled? don’t jettison any tradition, in the sense that I’m intrigued by all of them. I, personally, am not an observant Jew. I’m not frum; I’m not observant; I don’t keep kosher. Every once in a while I think there would be something sort of nice about observing the Sabbath, but it just has never worked out, and I guess I never felt a strong Did Bellow? I don’t know. Bellow did, I think; likewise Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. Oh, really? God bless her. I don’t know; it doesn’t make sense to me. I see it as so essential to your own survival as a human being and to your own internal coherence. Maybe to somebody like Cyn- enough pull. And I have diffithia, or Roth, to be thought of culty in shul, because I sort of as a Jewish writer, there was a believe, and sort of don’t be- fear that you would be ghetlieve. Again, I think it has more toized as a kind of novelty act, to do with community than it has to do with God, and real writers, real American writers, were not Jews but maybe those two things are not as separate as I’m (except, of course, for all the important American making them out to be. writers of the 20 So what was Harold Bloom talking about when he branded you a “theological” writer? I think Harold’s idea is that “Angels in America” is primarily of interest as a theological text, that it’s a form of Gnosticism, that the notion of the abdication of God and the vanishing of God is consonant with Gnostic theology. And that my real calling is as a theological writer, and not as a political writer. He thinks that the good stuff in “Angels” is the spiritual th I am a Jewish writer, I am a gay writer, and I am an American writer. century, to the point where John Updike actually has to pretend to be a Jew—with Bech.) But I am a Jewish writer, and I am a gay writer, and I am an American writer, and I don’t see any point in trying to argue about that. Maybe if I was a better writer than I am then I would think I’ve transcended all of these things, but if Tolstoy didn’t transcend being Russian, and Shakespeare didn’t transcend being English, fair bet that neither I nor any of the people we’ve mentioned have transcended our American-ness, or our Jewishness. 15

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