WNYC; Andrea Bernstein; Homebody
- Collection
- WNYC
- Series
- Andrea Bernstein
- Episode
- Homebody
- Contributing Organization
- WNYC (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/80-90dv4sbr
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- Description
- Description
- Eight years ago, playwright Tony Kushner stunned theater audiences with his 7-hour play Angels in America, about AIDS in the Reagan 80s. Now his new play, Homebody/Kabul is in previews at the New York Theater Workshop. And it proves just as topical, though in a way no one could have predicted. WNYCs Andrea Bernstein reports. Tony Kushner has never been shy about tackling huge subjects. Indeed, the pulitzer-prize winning Angels, launched a whole new era in American playwriting, according to the Yale School of Dramas James Leveritt. Leveritt: 03 and suddenly with this play on broadway the center of commercial theater in the world really there was this american play with these huge political and social and spiritual themes being played out. In 1997, Mr. Kushner began a play about Afghanistan. The entire first act is a monologue by a British woman the homebody. She reads books, takes antidepressants, and begins to obsess about Afghanistan. This comes after she visits a curio shop to party hats. When she hands over her credit card, she notices the shopkeepers fingers have been sliced off. Homebody: (01) I ask him to tell me what had happened to his hand. And he says: I was with the muhajadin and the Russians did this. I was with the muhajadin and an enemy faction of muhajadin did this. I was with the Russians, I did informers work my name is in the files if they havent been destroyed. The names I gave are in the files. There are no more files. I stole bread for my starving family. I stole bread from a starving family. I profaned, betrayed, according to the some strictures I erred and they cut of my hand Look, look at my country. Look at my Kabul, what is left of my city? The play had a few readings in London. It played to a small congregation in Brooklyn last spring. The plays subject seemed to surprise audiences They were used to something, a little more topical from Mr. Kushner. 01: Kushner: And people from the beginning said you know well its interesting because I didnt really know anything about Afghanistan I didnt even know really where it is and who knew at so many points in history it was so central to world history?..Its like Poland its a country thats at the intersection you know of various empires and has always been and everything that happens has to traverse through these places. After the homebody visits the curio shop, she picks up an old guidebook. She intersperses recollections of the party she organized, with observations about life in 1998, with long passages from the guidebook. Track 02: Nothing is known of the Aryan passage through the valleys of the Hindu Kush. No writing or significant structure remains from the Aryan Settlement, the first contemporaneous account to mention the city is recorded circa 520 BC when Darius the great annexed 25 countries. Mr. Kushner insists he had no idea of the role Afghanistan would play on the world stage, as the play was opening on a small New York stage. But the theme from the guidebook of a nation subject to wave after wave of brutal invasion couldnt be more current. Reporter: CNN tape track 2: The city fell to the Northern Alliance muhajadin on Monday. In fact occasionally you hear great bursts of gunfire here, but Im not sure whether these shots are fired in anger or celebration. There is certainly a great deal of joy now that the Taliban has left, have been forced to leave after what many people see hat was certainly seen as a brutal rule The Talibans brutal rule becomes the focus of the play, in acts 2 and 3, when the scene switches to Kabul. There, the homebodys daughter and father hear from an Afghani doctor. He claims the homebody is dead. And He describes in detail her dismemberment for walking without a burqa. Her daughter, Pricilla, puts her own burqa to search Kabuls hospitals for her mothers body. Track 03: Afgani speaking (interspersed with) Wait, wait, please Im sorry I just keep spilling things and I Wait I dont speak, I speak English I am English, British The resonances, of the play begun in 1997, are certainly eerie the Taliban, the invasions. And for New Yorkers, the coincidences get even weirder. Theres a line in the play, from an Afghani woman, a former librarian trying to escape the county. She criticizes the U.S. for its early support of the Taliban. Kushner: and then says, if you love the Taliban so much, well dont worry theyre coming to New York, which used to be this grim little laugh line. People who were watching the play thought yeah, thats probably true at some point there will be a terrorist attacks in the United States because weve been talking about this for years. Now, after 9/11, it has quite a different impact. There are other resonances. In acts 2 and 3, Priscilla searches hospital after hospital in a vain search for her mothers body. That experience was shared by thousands of New Yorkers this fall. And yet in August, as critics were writing their pre-theater season round-ups, Kushner says they wondered if the plays subject would be its demise. 04: And the first question is why are you writing about Afghanistan, do you think people care about Afgranistan not in the sense of how did you know it was going to be important but why are you bothering? Now everyone is bothering, even the presidents wife. 05: Laura Bush: Good Morning, Im Laura Bush and Im delivering this weeks radio address to kick off a world wide efforts to focus on the brutality against women and children by the Al Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Talibanwomen cannot work outside their homes, or even leave their homes by themselves. Bernstein: A lot of the coverage Ive seen so far says its prescient, its prescient. Tony Kushner the prophet he know this was going to happen. Does that say something about you, or does it say something about a work of art, the way its meanings can change. I mean perhaps one doesnt always get to glimpse it because events are so timely? Kushner: Im you know, Im absolutely not prescient. I dont have ESP. And I as shocked as anyone when I heard the news about the World Trade Center. As the play draws to an end, Priscilla has searched vainly for her mothers body. Unconfirmed rumors suggest the homebody may have become so fully absorbed by Afghanistan that she has defected. Priscilla confronts her father. 04: Priscilla: youre safe in the hotel room surely. Father: people remain at home when tragedies happen and the government aranges things like shipping bodies. Priscilla, the government cant even tell us if shes alive. Father: Priscilla! This isnt a family drama with Afghanistan as a backdrop, or a polemic about history with the characters as mouthpieces. The political battleground and the family battleground have become one. New Yorkers would expect no less of Kushner, says Yales Leveritt. Leveritt: 07: you know the way new york imagines itself there are certain figures that seem to become emblematic of the culture and the artistic life of new york and hes definitely one of them, and hes one of them because of the huge chunk of reality that he is able to take as a subject A huge chunk of reality that wasnt yet real when he started the play. For WNYC, Im Andrea Bernstein.
- Genres
- News
- Topics
- News
- Rights
- WNYC
- Media type
- Sound
- Credits
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: Leveret, James
Producer: Bernstein, Andrea
Reporter: Bernstein, Andrea
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 11356.1 (WNYC Media Archive MDB)
Format: Data CD
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:07:03
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 11356.2 (WNYC Media Archive MDB)
Format: Data CD
Generation: Original
Duration: 00:07:03
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WNYC-FM
Identifier: 11356.3 (WNYC Media Archive Label)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Generation: Dub
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- Citations
- Chicago: “WNYC; Andrea Bernstein; Homebody,” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 13, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-90dv4sbr.
- MLA: “WNYC; Andrea Bernstein; Homebody.” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. June 13, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-90dv4sbr>.
- APA: WNYC; Andrea Bernstein; Homebody. Boston, MA: WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-90dv4sbr