By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Jim Fisher (r) with playwright Tony Kushner.
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 6-13-08
GREENSBORO — Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize- winning “Angels in America” hit Jim Fisher like a small earthquake.
“I had only read about 10 pages and my hands were shaking,” says Fisher, head of the Department of Theatre. “This play was saying things that I couldn’t begin to articulate but felt.”
Fisher has been a Kushner fan ever since. His new book, “Understanding Tony Kushner,” University of South Carolina Press, 208 pp, provides an analytical look at “Angels” and more recent Kushner works such as “Homebody/Kabul” and “Caroline, or Change.”
Fisher taught a Kushner seminar at Wabash College in the mid-90’s, and arranged for Kushner to speak with theater students. Fisher still corresponds with Kushner.
“He doesn’t read material about himself and his work because it makes him self-conscious, but he’s been supportive in spirit,” Fisher says. “He opened doors for me in my research that might not otherwise have opened.”
Fisher finds Kushner to be something of an enigma. Openly gay, a self-described socialist, socially concerned and politically vocal, the soft-spoken Kushner doesn’t shy away from controversy.
“He’s diversified in an interesting way,” Fisher says of Kushner, whose plays tackle hot button issues such as AIDS, the ethicality of vengeance and the terrors of the Taliban.
“People think of him as a gay playwright, but his politics are more important than his sexuality. And he’s sort of the moral scourge of his own side. He’s chastising not just those who disagree with him; he’s chastising his own side as well. And that’s what a good dramatist should do.”
