Powerful Kushner play on tap for Blackbox Theater

Skidmore?s Theater Department will present A Bright Room Called Day by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner for six performances, Friday through Wednesday, Feb. 27?March 4, in the Blackbox Studio located in the College?s Bernhard Theater. All performances will begin at 8 p.m., except the Sunday, March 1, matinee, which will start at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 for general admission, and $7 for students and senior citizens. Seating is limited and reservations are required; for reservations and information call the Bernhard Theater box office at (518) 580-5439.

Directed by Skidmore senior Alison Schultz, Kushner?s play follows a group of artists and political activists struggling to preserve themselves in 1930s Berlin as the Weimar Republic gives way to the oncoming era of Nazi fascism.

First produced in the mid-1980s, A Bright Room Called Day tells its story in the voice of Zillah, a contemporary American woman whose magical-realistic monologues juxtapose political realities from the 1930s through the 1960s and into the present, pointing up startling similarities among the different eras whenever political power overrides individual rights. The Chicago Tribune called the play ?a lyrical, savagely funny piece of theatre, brash, audacious and ? a good deal of theatrical fun? and critic Anthony Adler described it as "wild, uneven, pugnacious, ragged, committed, smart, dumb, satirical, and?most important, always passionately committed.?

The Skidmore production will feature Marie Roussel ?10 as Zillah, with additional roles performed by Anthony Bentrovato ?11 (Traum), Brooke Cohen ?09 (Paulinka), Leah Cohen ?11 (Agnes), Lizzy Karp ?11 (Malek), Trevor Martin ?09 (Baz), Gabriel Weissman ?10 (Husz), and Sarah Whalen ?09 (Gotchling).

Born in 1956, Kushner grew up in Lake Charles, La., in a musical and artistic family. He earned a Columbia University degree in medieval studies and theater in 1974 and a master?s degree in directing from New York University in 1984. He began writing and producing plays in the 1980s; since then, Kushner has written nearly 20 plays, most notably the 1992 Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Consisting of two full-length plays, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, Angels in America earned Kushner numerous honors and awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the New York Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. The 2003 HBO production, directed by Mike Nichols, featured Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson. Kushner has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the NEA, the Whiting Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Noted for their wit and sophistication, Kushner?s plays are passionate examinations of such issues as politics, sexuality, religion, economics, life, death, and personal character revealed, as one critic phrased it, through tests of ?moral responsibility during politically repressive times.?