Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner is writing a
new play that will premiere at Minneapolis's Guthrie
Theater in spring 2009, the theater announced
Thursday.
The Guthrie
commissioned Kushner, who wrote the epic AIDS drama
Angels in America, to write a new play, which
he is tentatively calling "The Intelligent
Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a
Key to the Scriptures,'' Guthrie director Joe
Dowling said.
Set in Brooklyn,
N.Y., the play ''will have a family dynamic, and it will
be dealing directly with gay issues,'' Dowling said.
The theater,
which has never done a Kushner play, started discussing the
possibility of a world premiere with Kushner late last year,
Dowling said.
''I have great
admiration for Tony's work,'' Dowling said. ''Tony is
always engaged with the issues -- both political and social
issues -- that really resonate with the audience.''
The theater also
wanted to establish itself as a place for both classical
and contemporary works, and hopes the partnership with
Kushner will let the world know it's now in the
business for world premieres, Dowling said. The
Guthrie opened an elaborate new three-stage theater
overlooking the Mississippi in June 2006. ''This is an
indication of a big change,'' Dowling said. ''We want
to be seen as one of those theaters that creates new
works for the American stage.''
Kushner, who has
also received an Emmy and two Tony awards, won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for Millennium
Approaches, the first half of his two-part Angels in
America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,
which offers a look at AIDS and gay life in the 1980s.
Angels in America was later made into an HBO
film.
His other plays
include A Bright Room Called Day and
Homebody/Kabul. He also wrote the book for the
musical Caroline, or Change and the screenplay
for Steven Spielberg's Munich. (AP)