Why Politics and Purity Don't Mix

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Those worries were swept away in December 2001, when Homebody/Kabul, Kushner's nearly four-hour journey through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, opened at the New York Theater Workshop. Written over a five-year period, Homebody/Kabul had the dubious good fortune of opening scant months after the 9/11 attacks and President Bush's military campaign against the Taliban. It reestablished Kushner as a playwright of determined political relevance and generous global sympathies. Today, Kushner's plate is overflowing with projects. In addition to his frequent antiwar stump speeches, he recently staged a musical that is loosely based on his Louisiana childhood (Caroline, or Change), finished co-editing the aforementioned anthology, Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Grove Press, 2003), and is writing a new play about the Bush administration, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Will Be Unhappy.

When I was Googling you in preparation for this interview, I found an article I had written about your visit to Philadelphia in 2001, when we first met.

Oh, I've never Googled myself! I'm terrified of finding some right-wing Web site chat room that's dedicated to masticating me.

That wouldn't really bother you, would it?

Yeah, I have a terribly thin skin. I'm working on it. I'm really sort of a coward, and the idea that people are coming after me makes me anxious, no matter who they are.

But you've written such polarizing things.

Well, you have to do that because that's the right thing to do, but it doesn't mean it's not scary that people are going to get mad and come after you. I don't think I'd really want to be someone who was so self-confident that I didn't feel on some level that I was assailable. I've met people who have a sense of complete invincibility or invulnerability, but that often comes with a high price and a certain loss of perspective.

Which are you more frightened of -- criticism from the right, who are opposed to everything you stand for, or criticism from the left, who would accuse you either of not going far enough or of going about things the wrong way?

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