Faith Some More

The passion between church and art

Comments (0) By Janet Kim Tuesday, Mar 9 2004

photo: Gloria Wegener (left) and Katherine Newbegin (right)

A spirited duo: Kushner (left) and Bloom

Details

Theatre and Religion: The World's Oldest Couple: Harold Bloom & Tony Kushner
Monday at 7:30
NYU, Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place
212.992.8484
$25 to $65

More About

The bedfellowship of drama and religion began with the Greeks when Iocasta and Oedipus angered the gods, continued with the Elizabethans in biblical stagings, and remains espoused today. For this unique event benefiting the Classic Stage Company, one of our great literary critics, Harold Bloom, who teaches us how to read and why and defends texts by "dead white men" from the "school of resentment" (feminists, Marxists, deconstructionists, et al.), will partake in a conversation catechizing the relationship between church and art with Tony Kushner, one of America's foremost playwrights. The rare pair will examine the rich canon of theater, from the ancient tragedies to Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning modern classic Angels in America, an intricate interweaving of men and women realizing their sexuality and spirituality during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, as well as his play about a housewife's dangerous infatuation with Afghanistan, Homebody/Kabul, restaged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May. As institutional Christianity forces its way into current American ideology, these literary sages illuminate the necessity of art and its ability to reflect upon true faith.