Tony Kushner on His New Trump Play- 'The Nightmare is in High Gear'

In a recent interview with the Daily Beast, playwright Tony Kushner opens up about his new play about the Trump presidency. "The nightmare is in high gear," says Kushner. "It certainly feels like folly that I or anyone else has a definitive understanding or comprehensive understanding of what going on. I have my guesses like everyone else has, but it will take some time and a lot will depend on how it is resolved."

He continues: "For 40 years the Republican Party has said that government is evil and greed is good, that history is of no interest, and courTEd White supremacy. The result of the election was the expression of what they want, and it showed a majority of white evangelicals did not care about the behavior of a president that doesn't seem that Christian. Donald Trump is the antithesis of everything Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount."

Click here to read the full interview.

Tony Kushner's plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Angels in America, Parts One and Two; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; the musical Caroline, or Change and the opera A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, both with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide To Capitalism And Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures. He has adapted and translated Pierre Corneille's The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the English-language libretto for the opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa.

He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film of Angels In America, and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln. His books include Brundibar, 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.

Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, among other honors. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.