Tony Kushner is writing a play about Donald Trump because why not
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner is going to take on President Trump. Kushner, who most famously tackled the AIDS crisis in his powerful two-part drama Angels in America, announced Wednesday that he is working on a play about Trump set two years before the real estate mogul was elected president, The Daily Beast reports.
"The nightmare is in high gear," Kushner said. "It certainly feels like folly that I or anyone else has a definitive understanding or comprehensive understanding of what [is] going on. I have my guesses like everyone else has, but it will take some time and a lot will depend on how it is resolved."
Plays about Trump do not always go over well — even when the play in question isn't actually about Trump. But Kushner said he wants to write Trump as more than just a metaphor: "He's the kind of person, as a writer, I tend to avoid as I think he is borderline psychotic," Kushner said. "I definitely think that incoherence lends itself well to drama, but he really is very boring. It's terrifying because he has all the power, but without the mental faculties he ought to have."
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Kushner added, though, that he believes the story is worth the risk: "I gambled with Angels, which is set in the Reagan era but which I felt would be historically significant 30, 40, 50 years later, because something really fundamental had shifted under Reagan," he said. "The same thing is true with Trump." Read the full interview at The Daily Beast.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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