CANCELLED Tony Kushner: A Conversation about Art and Politics
Sanford Fleishman Commons
Crown Lecture in Ethics
CANCELLED:Join Tony Kushner, best known for his magnum-opus Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, for an intimate conversation on arts and politics, the state of the nation, and civil participation. Recipient of a National Medal of Arts and Humanities and winner of Pulitzer Prize for Drama, multiple Emmys and Tony Awards, Kushner's political plays are rarely polemic as he constantly forces the audience to identify with the marginalized: a drag queen dying of AIDS, an uneducated Southern maid, contemporary Afghans, and more. Kushner is the 2014 Crown Lecturer in Ethics, a series that brings leaders to discuss the ethical concerns in the fields of the arts, science, public policy, health and business. The event takes place in the Fleishman Commons and is free and open to public. Parking is available in the Public Policy lot.
Lindsley, Mary - mary.lindsley@duke.edu
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Crown Lecturer in Ethics
Speaker Bio:
Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner is best known for his epic two-art play "Angels in America." His work gives voice to the powerless and marginalized: a drag queen dying of AIDS, an uneducated Southern maid, contemporary Afghans. He has written two screenplays for Steven Spielberg, "Munich" and "Lincoln." The latter was nominated for an Academy Award.
His most recent play, "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures," is a family drama that grapples with themes of suicide, the decline of unions and social justice.
Raised in Louisiana, Kushner calls himself "a man of the left" and is an outspoken advocate for gay rights and progressive politics. "I believe that politics is also the art of the miraculous," he said in an interview in The Santa Barbara Independent.
In 2013, he received the National Medal of the Arts. Kushner has also won a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, an Emmy and numerous other awards for his work.
"Tony Kushner has woven politics into his art and brought the clarifying language of poetry to politics," Phil Bennett, director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy said. "As a provocateur, social critic and moral conscience he's been an evangelist not just for progressive causes, but for the cause of American democracy. A powerful call for active citizenship runs through his work. "