Tony Kushner

A smouldering political allegory about a political protest in a country ruled by a military junta. From the author of Death and the Maiden, written in collaboration with Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America. In a war-torn village the men have disappeared. The women – their mothers, wives, daughters – wait by the river, hope and mourn. Their anguish is unspoken until bruised and broken bodies begin being washed up on the banks and the women defy the military in the only form of protest left to them. Ariel Dorfman’s play Widows is based on his 1983 novel of the same name. The play was first presented by the Traverse Theatre Company at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in March 1997. (An earlier version of the play was first performed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in July 1991).

A collection of essays, poems, a prayer and a play from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America. This volume contains Tony Kushner's play Slavs!, about the decline and disintegration of the USSR and its rebirth as a collection of independent states. Slavs! was premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky in March 1994. It later moved to the New York Theatre Workshop in December 1994. Also included is a series of essays – American Things; Fick Oder Kaputt!; A Socialism of the Skin (Liberation, Honey!); With a Little Help from My Friends; Some Questions About Tolerance; Copious, Gigantic, Sane; and On Pretentiousness. Two poems: An Epithalamion and The Second Month of Mourning. And finally, A Prayer, the text of a sermon by Kushner given for the Episcopalian National Day of Prayer for Aids, which was delivered at the Cathedral Chruch of St John the Divine in New York City on 9 October 1994. 'Extraordinary compendium... Kushner is drunk on ideas, on language, on the possibility of changing the world' - Larry Kramer

The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination attempts to explain and not to condemn the responses and reactions of the democratic world to the attempted destruction of European Jewry. It concentrates on the impact of the Holocaust on ordinary people in the democracies and examines the actions of the nation-state in the light of popular responses. Ultimately this study argues that the Holocaust is not simply German, Jewish or continental history but is an integral but neglected part of the experience of many countries away from the killing fields. It is the first social and cultural history of its subject.

Part Two of the two-part Angels in America, Tony Kushner's epic drama set during the Reagan years in America - now recognised as one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. Perestroika picks up the stories of Prior and Cohn from Part One: Millennium Approaches. Prior, overwhelmed by the responsibilties of 'prophet' placed on him by the angels, wishes that they would leave him alone. Cohn, now dying from the virus, continues to manipulate the system from his hospital bed. But who is left to look after them now? And does anyone still care? With a climax as bittersweet as it is beautiful, we are left wondering who the real angels are in a disparate world. Perestroika was premiered in November 1992 in a production by the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, directed by Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone. In November 1993 it received its London debut in a National Theatre production on the Cottesloe stage, in repertory with a revival of Millennium Approaches, again directed by Declan Donnellan. Perestroika won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Play.

Pt.1. Millennium Approaches. First performed in Britain at the National Theatre in January 1992, this play is written from a gay perspective and with an AIDS theme. The author is the award-winning writer of "A Bright Room Called Day".