|
Documentary on Playwright Tony Kushner Airs on PBS
Oscar-winning director profiles part-time Garrison resident whose Angels in America garnered the Pulitzer Prize
P.O.V. 's special broadcast presentation of Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner premieres on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007 at 9pm on PBS, concluding the series' 20th season. American television's longest-running independent documentary series, P.O.V. is public television's premier showcase for point-of-view, nonfiction films, and is a 2007 recipient of a Special News & Documentary Emmy Award for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking.
Since the early 1990s breakthrough of his two-part epic, Angels in America - subsequently made into a hit miniseries - Kushner has emerged as one of the country's leading playwrights. With his cutting wit and penchant for uncomfortable opinions, Kushner has earned a Pulitzer, Emmy and two Tony Awards - and a reputation running the gamut from charming to demanding and unpredictable.
Yet the man portrayed in Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, the new documentary from Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock having its national broadcast premiere on public television's P.O.V. series, is resolutely upbeat, productive, at ease with himself, and tender with family and friends. Kushner can even be described as amazingly relaxed for someone whose days are a blur of disparate activities united by his drive both to "speak the truth" and to succeed as an artist - never mind being a gay progressive who grew up in the South.
As she demonstrated in her 1996 Oscar-winning P.O.V. film, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, (about the designer of the Vietnam Memorial) director Mock has a natural feel for the world of artists. In Wrestling With Angels, she includes extended performances and readings from Kushner's plays and musicals, with appearances and commentary from such theatrical lights as actresses Marcia Gay Harden, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Tonya Pinkins, directors Mike Nichols, George C. Wolfe and Oskar Eustis, and writer/artist Maurice Sendak.
Mock tells Kushner's story in a three-act with epilogue structure that opens not at the beginning, nor with the play that made Kushner a force to reckon with. Rather, in Act 1: Citizen of the World, she begins with Kushner today - a whirlwind of speech-giving, panel-sitting, demonstrating, writing and weathering the premiere and mixed reviews accorded his then-newest work, Homebody/ Kabul.
Mock's approach creates a dramatic perspective. Wrestling With Angels is more than a retrospective account of a powerful play and its impact. It is a portrait in motion of a passionate, introspective artist and energetic political activist whose work continues to unfold.
| Click ads below
for larger version
System and Method for Display
Ads have a Patent Pending.
Click Here for More Information
|
)