New Releases by Tony Kushner

"In a eminently playable, witty adaptation by Tony Kushner, The Illusion comes across as downright entertaining, not an adjective anyone who reads Corneille in college is likely to expect. Unlike his better known plays, which have heroic subjects, The Illusion is concerned with domestic matters the alienation of parents from children, marital infidelity. While it is serious about these subjects, it puts them in an unusual context: A father has consulted a magician about his estranged son, and the magician shows him scenes from his son''s life... The comedy is elegant, full of depth."--Howard Kissel, Daily News.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Angels in America" presents a major collection of short plays written over the past few yeas.

Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great twentieth-century innovators in theater -- the equivalent in his art of a Picasso or Stravinsky -- but the playwright was also a dazzling writer of stories as well as a lifelong poet. In Collected Stories, which includes the prize-winning "The Monster" and the fragmentary memoir "Life Story of the Boxer Samson-Korner", fans will find the same directness, lack of affectation, and wry humor that characterize his plays. The new edition of Brecht''s Selected Poems includes both Brecht''s best-known poems, many of which later made their way into his plays, as well as some that have never before been published in this country. For his new adaptation of The Goad Person of Setzuan, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winner Tony Kushner commissioned a literal translation, which he then refined as any translator would, but with the flair of an innate dramatist.

"This is an odd assemblage of plays, for which gathering-together there is no overarching thematic justification. Because several of the plays deal with death, and one of the death-plays deals as well with money, and the last play deals with taxation, we''re calling the book Death & Taxes. But all plays, directly or indirectly, are about death and taxes, so this title explains little..." –Tony Kushner This stunning new collection by Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America, showcases his masterful explorations of form and style. A rich and vibrant collection from one of our greatest American playwrights, Death & Taxes includes the following treasure trove of works: In Reverse Transcription: Six Playwrights Bury a Seventh, six playwrights come together to bury their contemporary and friend, Ding. They discuss and brood on their lives, writings, and loves. Theatre critic Dr. David Nowlan calls Reverse Transcription “rich in allusion, elegant in language and satirically funny” (Irish Times). Hydriotaphia or The Death of Dr. Browne begins at one man’s deathbed and becomes an epic farce spanning Heaven and Earth. “Karl Marx said that history occurs first as tragedy and then as farce. In Hydriotaphia, Tony Kushner says that history is tragedy and farce at once. Ben Jonson meets Bertolt Brecht in this brilliantly funny and dark knockabout play of the rise of the entrepreneurial spirit. As in all of Kushner’s work, the play teems with ideas.” –Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate “The play flourishes Kushner’s trademark ability to mix up wildly diverse tonalities and ideas — bawdy humor, theological and class warfare debate, fourth-wall-breaking, dizzying monologues, fantasy and domestic intrigue all whirl like a juggler’s pins.” -Variety Inspired by Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 75,” Terminating or Sonnet LXXV “is a delirious, scatological encounter between a psychotherapist, her madly besotted patient and their lovers, which contains some dizzyingly fine writing” (Variety). “Tony Kushner at his most fanciful and eclectic ... fierce, strange and clever theatre.” –Evening Standard East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis is a one-man show featuring two dozen characters’ involvement in a tax evasion scheme. “Surreal, confrontational and funny.” –Prospect Magazine (UK) "There is such clarity conveyed not just in the language but in the rhythm and the nuance. Ideas and phrases honey drip from the script. Listening is an indulgence.” –The Stage Notes on Akiba has been performed at The Jewish Museum and other venues during Passover. Fictionalized versions of playwright Tony Kushner and director Michael Mayer reimagine aspects of Jewish history, tradition and myth. G. David Schine in Hell was originally published in New York Times Magazine. Featuring an appearance by Kushner’s fictionalized Roy Cohn of Angels in America, this short play revisits Cohn and several other American Conservatives of the McCarthy era as they adjust to an afterlife in Hell.

The premier American playwright of this decade speaks out about art, sexuality, and social justice

The first part of the book features Tony Kushner''s adaptation of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky from Joachim Neugroschel''s translation, with an afterword by Harold Bloom. Considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish drama, The Dybuuk recounts the tale of a wealthy man''s daughter who is possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved. Also included in this volume is a selection of stories translated into English for the first time by Joachim Neugroschel, illuminating different aspects of the Jewish mystical world, including possessions, transmigration, fairy tales, parables and miracles.

"Tony Kushner’s adaptation of A Dybbuk, perhaps the greatest classic of Yiddish drama, is passionate and illuminating.” –Clive Barnes, New York Post “Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both.” -New York Times “As filtered through Kushner, the play has a deep wistfulness about a flawed but rich culture on the precipice of apocalyptic change, about technology poised to tear through ancient truths and the seductions of assimilation ready to devastate whatever culture is left after the slaughters of the twentieth century.” –Linda Winer, Newsday The first part of the book features Tony Kushner’s remarkable, imaginative adaptation of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky (from Joachim Neugroschel’s translation), with an afterword by Harold Bloom. Considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish drama, The Dybbuk recounts the tale of a wealthy man’s daughter who is possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved. Also included in this volume is a selection of stories translated into English for the first time by Joachim Neugroschel, illuminating different aspects of the Jewish mystical world, including possessions, transmigration, fairy tales, parables and miracles.

In this moving novel set in a Greek village in 1942, the corpses of disappeared men wash ashore. The village women claim the bodies as husbands and fathers, even though their faces are unrecognizable. A tug of war ensues between the local police, who insist the women cannot identify their loved ones, and the women, who demand the right to bury their dead. Their standoff becomes a struggle for dignity and honor against the forces of fascism. First published in 1983 and anticipating some of the themes of his award-winning play Death and the Maiden, Widows is Ariel Dorfmans eloquent tribute to those who have perished under totalitarian regimes. This is a classic parable of individual courage in the face of oppression from a literary grandmaster (Time). Lyrical and even elegiac ... Dorfman gives flesh to a human rights issue of our time. Chicago Tribune Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Cast size: medium.

The first collection of writings from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America. Includes Slavs!

In this first collection of writings by Tony Kushner, including his latest play Slavs!, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright grapples with the timeless issues of bigotry, war, faith, love, as well as tackling the contemporary topics as AIDS, gay rights and the moral horrors of the Gulf War.

Toneelstuk in twee delen over een kleine groep mensen in New York die ogenschijnlijk niets met elkaar van doen hebben. Het is 1985, Ronald Reagan is president en AIDS treft de homoseksuele gemeenschap.

This is the second part of Tony Kushner''s award-winning play (Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes) entitled Perestroika. In this play, the characters first introduced in the first part, Millennium Approaches, move from the opportunistic 1980s to a new sense of community in the 1990s as they struggle to overcome catastrophic loss.