Tony Kushner has two new plays on deck

Playbill.com reports that out playwright Tony Kushner--currently riding the crest of HBO's Angels in America, his Broadway-bound musical Caroline, or Change, and two new books with and about Maurice Sendak--isn't slowing down anytime soon. In fact, says the playwright, he has two new plays ready to go. The first to be produced is expected to be Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, a political play that features first lady Laura Bush reading The Brothers Karamazov to the ghosts of dead Iraqi children. Kushner, whose Homebody/Kabul critiques President Bush's Afghanistan policies, told the Hartford Courant, "If I finish it, I'm just going to give it to anyone who wants to do it before next year's election." Kushner's other new play, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures, is set to open in spring 2005 at Los Angeles's Mark Taper Forum. The show was written specifically for Stephen Spinella, who won two Tony awards for playing Prior Walter in the Broadway production of Angels in America.