Kushner: Miller’s ‘Death’ Still Speaks to Living

If there’s one thing the Cambridge arts intelligentsia could take away from Tony Kushner’s visit last Wednesday, it’s that he pulls no punches—whether discussing Israeli politics, the Bush administration, or “Death of a Salesman.”

Kushner, who famously authored the Pulitzer, Tony, and Emmy-winning “Angels in America,” as well as the screenplay to “Munich,” visited the Brattle Theatre last Wednesday. The occasion was a public discussion with theatrical director and theorist Robert Brustein about another celebrated American dramatist—the late Arthur Miller—and the recently-released anthology of Miller’s play edited by Kushner.

Before the event at the Brattle, Kushner also made a visit to at Harvard Hillel to discuss the influence of his Jewish roots on his writing and politics.

The New York-based playwright and self-described “Jewish-American gay socialist” brought these many facets of his persona to controversial interpretations of Miller’s plays as well as his own construction of Jewish identity.

A GAY JEW IN LOUISIANA

In a question-and-answer session with about 40 Harvard students at Hillel, the Louisiana-raised Kushner recalled how Judaism helped him get through a childhood of ostracism for being gay.

“Being Jewish helped me understand how I could be something that the rest of the world said was bad,” he said.

Kushner said he knew he was gay as early as age six. “I knew it all my life,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t like other boys.”

As his gay identity grew, the young Kushner met with hostility from his father. “He didn’t want me to be gay. He wrote me a letter when I was a freshman at Columbia that said that he wouldn’t have been proud of Tchaikovsky [who was homosexual] if he was his son.”

An outspoken critic of Israeli policy, Kushner has been subject to criticism from pro-Israel groups, especially in light of what some see as an unsympathetic portrayal of Israeli governmental assassins in “Munich.”

When a questioner asked Kushner about his stance on Israel, the audience that laughed along with Kushner’s bouncy portrayal of his difficult childhood fell deadly silent.

Kushner said that he supported the idea of an Israeli homeland. Still, he maintained his political opposition to the Israeli government. “Politically, I’m very troubled by the state of Israel. I think it’s creating an ethical catastrophe for our people,” Kushner said, citing human rights concerns for Palestinians.

“I think of myself as an American, a Jew, but certainly not an Israeli,” he said.

FRICTION IN REMEMBRANCE OF MILLER

Shortly after the Hillel talk, Kushner joined Robert Brustein—a 78-year-old founding member of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre, as well as a veteran critic for The New Republic—at the Brattle Theater for a contentious discussion of Arthur Miller’s life and work.

The two dramatic powerhouses disagreed on Miller’s place among contemporaries and predecessors, such as Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams.

Kushner called Miller a “genius of construction.” “Part of what makes him really great—that O’Neill and Williams didn’t do—is that he’s a real carpenter,” he argued. “Miller’s plays are just better constructed than everyone else’s in America.”

Brustein fundamentally disagreed, claiming that Miller’s structure was often too meticulous. “I’ve always had trouble with the relentless causality of his plays,” he said.

Brustein claimed that Miller only achieves greatness “when he breaks away from that and really takes off the bit that he’s wearing in his mouth.”

“If he did that more, I think he probably would have reached the heights of O’Neill instead of being right beneath him,” Brustein argued.

Although Kushner and Brustein did agree that “Death of a Salesman” was Miller’s best play, they greatly differed in their interpretations of the show’s meaning.

Brustein saw its political overtones as dated, whereas Kushner lobbied for the freshness of the play’s criticism of American economics.

“You can’t divorce ‘Death of a Salesman’ from its political indictment of capitalism,” Kushner said. “The system is operating by a logic that has nothing to do with human life. [Willy Loman’s] astonishment in the face of that, as the world leaves him, is incredibly moving. I don’t think it’s dated.”

Kushner took this opportunity to launch into his own indictment of the Bush administration and the larger Republican apparatus in the United States. Making no attempts to hide the leftist politics that have made him both famous and—in some circles—infamous, Kushner concluded with a call for solidarity in the face of the Republican control of Washington.

“It’s not good when the right controls this government because they don’t ‘get’ constitutional democracy,” Kushner said.

Despite their different stances on Miller, Brustein was sweeping in his praise of Kushner.

“After the death of Arthur Miller, there’s no question who the leading dramatist in America is at the present,” Brustein said, referring to Kushner.