Slavs!
Play Description
A fantastical/political/historical exploration of life in the Soviet Union in the earliest dawn of Perestroika. In scenes ranging from the inner chambers of the Politburo to a secret chamber beneath Lenin’s Tomb to a medical facility near a radioactive disposal site in Siberia, SLAVS! considers the difficulty, the failure, and the abiding importance of Socialism and of ongoing efforts towards building collective societies and a more just world.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
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- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Tony Kushner bears the curse of all artists unlucky enough to have captured the zeitgeist. They are expected to continue on their visionary path, explicating the world’s mysteries in each new play. Or they are tempted to use the stage as a bully pulpit, indicting the cause of our malaise and dolling out prescriptions to sooth the pain. It is a mark of Kushner’s sophistication that in his newest play he refuses to rest on his well-earned moral authority. A lesser writer would have followed ANGELS IN AMERICA with something smug and sweeping. As though Kushner feared such a fate, he instead has returned to where he started — a place of healthy confusion. A taut play results: Kushner’s humor buoys his political anguish, his lyricism draws dry ideas into rhapsodies and elegies, his interest in character won’t let even the most vaudevillian individual conform to type.” —Marc Robinson, The Village Voice
“The heaven that Tony Kushner envisions in the epilogue of SLAVS!, his bracing, rational 80-minute fantasia is a dark, gloomy place designed to look like a city after an earthquake … he has created a rambunctiously funny, seriously moving stage piece that is part buffoonish burlesque and part tragic satire. From beginning to end, it’s also shot through with the kind of irony virtually unknown in today’s theater, movies and television, where sarcasm passes as wit. There were hints of this exaggerated style in his epic MILLENNIUM APPROACHES and PERESTROIKA, collectively known as ANGELS IN AMERICA … Mr Kushner has emphasized that SLAVS! Is not to be taken as the work of a historian. Rather, it’s a work of a brilliant and restless imagination. Mr Kushner’s words dazzle, sting and prompt belly laughs.” —Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Author(s)
Tony KushnerBorn in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Tony Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES. His other plays include A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY, SLAVS!, HYDROTAPHIA, HOMEBODY/KABUL, and CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted Pierre Corneille's THE ILLUSION, S.Y. Ansky's THE DYBBUK, Bertolt Brecht's THE GOOD PERSON OF SEZUAN and MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, and the English-language libretto for the children's opera BRUNDIBÁR by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film of Angels in America and Steven Spielberg's Munich. In 2012 he wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's movie Lincoln. His screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, Chicago Film Critics Award, and several others. His books include But the Giraffe: A Curtain Raising and Brundibar: The Libretto, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. His recent work includes a collection of one-act plays entitled TINY KUSHNER, and THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES. In addition, a revival of ANGELS IN AMERICA ran Off-Broadway at the Signature Theater and won the Lucille Lortel Award in 2011 for Outstanding Revival. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement, and the 2012 National Medal of Arts, among many others. CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, produced at the National Theatre of Great Britain, received the EVENING STANDARD Award, the London Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical. In September 2008, Tony Kushner became the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the largest theater award in the US. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Commissioned and premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville
Produced in New York by New York Theatre Workshop
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
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