cfp.english.upenn.edu

Almost twenty years ago Tony Kushner raised the rafters with his epic Angels in America and this gave just cause for playwrights to recognize that Kushner was now the new benchmark and, as Arthur Miller said, attention must be paid. The HBO televised Angels gave many admirers and aspirers an opportunity to see the play more so than even its many nationwide productions. The influence of Kushner and his plays has reached into the context and subtext of a mindset that reconsidered what plays can do as art, and as socio-political activism reflected in both traditional and tradition-defying new drama. Charles McNulty wrote in The Los Angeles Times about just a few of the plays that exemplify the continuing artistic impact of "Angels": Rajiv Joseph's "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," Julia Cho's "The Language Archive" and Lisa's Kron's "In the Wake" (previously titled "The Wake" for its world premiere in March at the Kirk Douglas Theatre). Another play, Christopher Shinn's "Now or Later," which opened in 2008 at London's Royal Court bears a striking intellectual kinship as well. Kushner was influenced by Brecht and Foreman; now he is the exemplar for the Twenty-First Century. This panel will identify and correlate Kushnerian vibes and echoes found in the new drama of the new century.