Live now! Watch video from the 2010 Tony Awards®! Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling announced Oct. 16 the directors who will helm the three productions scheduled for the 2009 Tony Kushner celebration.
Guthrie veteran director/choreographer Marcela Lorca will helm Caroline, or Change, which will be seen on the Guthrie's Wurtele Thrust Stage. The Tony-nominated Caroline will run concurrently with Kushner's world-premiere commission, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, on the McGuire Proscenium Stage. Michael Greif, of Rent and Grey Gardens fame, will direct the new work. And, Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone will direct "tiny Kushner," a collection of Kushner's short plays in the Dowling Studio. The short plays will include Geraldine of Albania Meets Lucia Pamela on the Moon, Terminating or Sonnet LXXV or "Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein" or Ambivalence, East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis, Dr. Arnold A. Hutschneker in Paradise and Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Happy.
The Guthrie also announced three speaking events that will be part of the Kushner celebration. Former New York Times theatre critic and current Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich will speak on the "intersection of arts, culture and politics" from the Wurtele Thrust Stage on May 11, 2009, at 7:30 PM. Lambda Legal executive director Kevin M. Cathcart will offer two "In Conversation" events in the Dowling Studio May 23 at 1 PM and May 24 at 7 PM, discussing "the movement to achieve full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV." The speaker series will conclude with a Global Voice presentation from celebration honoree Tony Kushner June 8 at 7:30 PM on the Wurtele Thrust Stage.
Kushner won back-to-back Tony Awards for the two-part epic Angels in America. The first half, Millennium Approaches, won the 1993 Best Play Tony and the second, Perestroika, was awarded the 1994 Best Play prize. His other works include A Bright Room Called Day, Slavs!: Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, Henry Box Brown and The Mirror of Slavery.
Tickets for the plays are now available, while tickets for the speaking events will go on sale Oct. 20 by calling (612) 377-2224 or by visiting www.guthrietheater.org.
