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Tony Kushner probably won't read this.

The playwright who penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angels in America" admits that he doesn't usually read articles, essays and books that focus on him.
Nor has he seen "Wrestling With Angels," the 2006 documentary about him.

Don't get Kushner wrong. He appreciates the interest.
But the artist and activist is uncomfortable reading what he has said - or didn't say - in interviews. Or what others say about him.

"I don't particularly want to incorporate that information into my sense of myself, or into my sense of what I need to do in terms of presenting myself to an audience," says Kushner, talking by cell phone over the background noise of a New York street.

What he does enjoy is answering questions from an audience.
He will do that on Tuesday at UNCG's Aycock Auditorium, responding to questions from James Fisher, head of UNCG's theater department, as well as from spectators.

"I used to stand up and read a lecture, but I felt that the question-and-answer part was more fun," Kushner says. "You find out what kind of place you are in and what people are concerned about and interested in."

Fisher knows much about Kushner. His three books on the man considered one of the greatest living playwrights include this year's "Understanding Tony Kushner."

"His work has become my life's work, in terms of following and writing about it," Fisher says.

Kushner, 52, emerged as a dramatist in the mid-1980s, while a graduate student at New York University.

He attracted praise and controversy in the 1990s for "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," his epic play in two parts about the AIDS crisis.

He won the 1993 Pulitzer for drama for part one, "Millennium Approaches." That and part two, "Perestroika," won back-to-back Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards.
The HBO miniseries version of the play garnered Golden Globe and Emmy awards.

Kushner's work extends well beyond "Angels." His plays have focused on pressing concerns of war, class, race, gay and lesbian rights.

They include the 2001 "Homebody/Kabul" about an English family caught up in the conflicts in Afghanistan, and the 2003 "Caroline, or Change," about America's racial divide.
He has moved into screenplays, co-writing the 2005 film "Munich," and is working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln for Steven Spielberg.

Even though his plays tackle difficult issues, "His characters are very real and human, he uses humor, and he has a real flair for the theatrical," Fisher says. "So his plays have surprising and appealing aspects."

When he sits down to write, Kushner doesn't plan in advance what he wants his audience to get, he says.

"I think about a certain set of subjects that have been nagging at me, that I have questions about and don't understand myself. I start to think about a story that could address those. You don't know what it will do. It might be a play that speaks to a lot of people or it might speak to no one but you.

"The important thing is to start from the place where your certainty ends and go forward from there ... if you do your principal job well, which is to entertain, an audience will follow you."

But with success also comes pressure.

"It's unlikely that anything I write for the theater now is going to fly under the radar," Kushner says. "When I sit down to write, I can't tell myself that I am just doing it for myself, that I can try things I know might work or might not work because I will be protected by some degree of privacy.

"But I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. It's certainly a situation I hoped would happen when I started to work."

Last month, Kushner became the first recipient of the new $200,000 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.
He plans to use the money to buy time to stay home and write plays.

"It's becoming harder and harder for people to make a living if they try to make it purely from writing plays," he says. "Most playwrights do what I do - screenplays, lectures, teach - to supplement their income."

By bringing Kushner to UNCG, Fisher wants to inspire theater students' interest "in a dramatist whose work is socially and intellectually engaged."

"Tony is very clear on why he makes theater, and I want my students to hear that," Fisher says.

In addition to theater, politics likely will come up, too. Kushner enthusiastically supports Barack Obama for president.

"Once he gets rolling on a subject, you are in for a big ride," Fisher says. "In his plays, his characters often have long arias, and that's sort of the way he talks in life."

Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com