San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)

The rare genius who makes you feel smarter

-

The brilliance of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwrit­er Tony Kushner can hop universes, traveling from the Manhattan of Roy Cohn to a fantastica­l Antarctica to a heaven crippled by bureaucrac­y, as in “Angels in America.” Or it can find new life and still more heart in one of the greatest musicals of all time, as when Kushner updated “West Side Story” with a richer Chino and a far-seeing Valentina, among other illustrati­ve changes.

In conversati­on, he adds generosity to his brilliance; it shines in a way that doesn’t blind but makes you somehow feel smarter, too.

Now Bay Area audiences can witness the Kushner effect in person and bask in its afterglow as he appears in conversati­on, with Stanford religious studies professor Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Hebrew literature professor Vered Karti Shemtov, about the 2005 Steven Spielberg film “Munich,” which Kushner co-wrote with Eric Roth.

— Lily Janiak “Munich”: An Evening With Tony Kushner: 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19. Free. Oshman Hall, McMurtry Building, 355 Roth Way, Stanford. https://events.stanford.edu

 ?? ?? Evan Agostini/Invision
Evan Agostini/Invision

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States