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Tony Kushner's Community
In order to understand Tony Kushner's community, it is necessary to understand some aspects of the AIDS epidemic that ran rampant through the gay community throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The first signs of the epidemic were discovered by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981. They found it to be most prevalent in gay men. Because of the time it took for the HIV infection to develop into symptoms, many thousands of gay males were infected before AIDS was identified. Many people feel that the AIDS epidemic developed into such a threat because of the "hostility and indifference of the government and the society at large, alongside mass denial from within some sectors of the gay community...President Ronald Regan did not even publicly mention AIDS by name until 1987" ("AIDS" 26). As a way to break the silence about the AIDS epidemic, ACT UP was formed in New York in the spring of 1987. ACT UP stands for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. It became a huge organization; its member ranged from activistss, to the casual observer, to the sick, to the loved ones of the sick, to the friends and family left behind. The founding of ACT UP was an important moment in AIDS history because AIDS victims and supporters successfully organized a political and investigative revolution without the help of the government; in fact, they did it in spite of the government. ACT UP wanted more funding for the treatment and research of AIDS, more efficient drug approval processes, and more extensive AIDS awareness and safe sex programs. In order to break the silence surrounding the epidemic and make the general public aware of the problem, ACT UP held demonstrations, staged theater performances, did anything to get their voices heard ("AIDS" 27). As a way of breaking the silence, artists began to show the impact of AIDS in their lives through their work. "Gay male fiction, poetry, dance, performance art, music, theater, and other arts became suffused with images of pain, loss, decay, and death" ("AIDS" 27). Kushner's Angels in America is a poignant example of how the AIDS epidemic affected the gay community. From the beginning of the story the audience is forced to become aware of the destruction caused by the disease. Kushner presents his view that AIDS affects everyone from the people who are sick, to those who love them, to those who arbitrarily meet them on the street, to those who never meet them but who read about them in the newspaper. Whether or not Prior or Roy, characters whose painful struggle with AIDS is apparent throughout the play, appears on stage, each and every scene is marked by the pain and sadness caused by the sickness. In this way, Angels in America is heart wrenching and depressing, but at the same time bold and inspiring. It is something capable of changing ordinary people's perception of the world and bringing to the light the issue of AIDS, making the disease something impossible to ignore. AIDS activism is not Kushner's only focus. He is a self-prescribed leftist political activist. He writes about current political affairs, as in Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, a play that features Laura Bush reading Dostoyevsky to dead Iraqi children, and Homebody/Kabul, a story that "links the modern worlds of London and New York to the fanatical politics of the Taliban" ("Tony Kushner, Radical Pragmatist" 1). Kushner also focuses on racial identity, as in his latest play Caroline or Change which tells the story of an African American maid serving a white Jewish family in Louisiana during the Civil Rights era ("Tony Kushner" 3). He believes that there is very little difference between being gay and being a person of color. In the April 22 issue of Gay City News, Kushner said, "people who understand being gay, or the gay culture, know that it is about being a minority facing a majoritarian rule, so questions of oppression translate across various boundaries" ("Kushner's New Winning Streak" 3). According to Beth Berlo of Bay Windows, "Kushner's plays are poignant, timely and never lacking in political tone" (Berlo 2). Apart from his writing, Kushner also speaks in political forums where he delivers his anti-conservative message and encourages the people to defend their beliefs; he also participates in demonstrations with ACT UP. Apart from his activism, another large part of Kushner's community is the theater. He is widely respected and works closely with the best in the field. His plays debut everywhere from Los Angeles, to New York, to San Francisco as well as in other countries. |
