Tony Kushner on Leonard Bernstein

“Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both.” —New York Times

Playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner is best known for his Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning plays Angels In America, Caroline, or Change and the screenplay for the 2012 film Lincoln. In this conversation with theater critic and scholar Alisa Solomon, Kushner will reflect on his relationship to the music of Leonard Bernstein, including his current work with Stephen Spielberg developing a screenplay of Bernstein’s West Side Story. Like Bernstein, Kushner is a powerful advocate for social change in his life and work, asking audiences to identify with the marginalized through humanizing acts of imagination.