(Laura Collins-Hughes’s article appeared in The New York Times, 11/11; via Pam Green.)
The return of Tony Kushner’s “A Bright Room Called Day” prompted us to ask leading writers: How did it go for you? And what did you learn?
Tony Kushner was in his 20s when he wrote “A Bright Room Called Day,” on the graveyard shift at his job as a hotel switchboard operator.
Ronald Reagan had just been re-elected, and Kushner, political to the core, channeled his alarm into the play. When his theater company, Heat & Light, staged it in 1985, Oskar Eustis — now the artistic director of the Public Theater — was there. That’s how they met.
“There’s a scene where the characters sing ‘The Internationale,’” Kushner said the other day, “and someone in the audience started singing along with them. And that was Oskar.”
Eustis, who gave Kushner his professional debut two years later when he staged “Bright Room” at the Eureka Theater in San Francisco, is now directing a revival at the Public.
Photo: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
