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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
In this exclusive new scene by Tony Kushner he is confronted by Laura Bush, who claims Dostoevsky for conservatives, defends her husband's poetry and extols his "vividness."
Aug 4, 2004 | The first act of Tony Kushner's new play, "Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy," has been performed around the country since it was published last year (to read it, click here). It was seen most recently at the American Airlines Theater in New York's Times Square on Monday night at a riveting benefit for MoveOn.org, with Kristen Johnston narrating, Patricia Clarkson playing an angel, and John Cameron Mitchell portraying Laura Bush. In honor of the event, Kushner penned a new scene, allowing the first lady to respond to the performance. It was performed Monday night with Clarkson playing Laura Bush, Mitchell playing the role of Tony Kushner, and Johnston playing herself.
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TONY KUSHNER:
Hi. My name is Tony Kushner, I'm a playwright, and I wrote the scene you just listened to. I wrote it one night over a year ago during the buildup to the second Iraq war. I couldn't sleep, I was so angry, so I wrote this scene, which left me feeling sad by the time I'd finished it. Since then I've been thinking of writing a full-length play about Laura Bush and the Bush administration -- Condoleezza Rice is also a big Dostoevsky fan -- but I haven't done that yet. I keep stalling. I guess I'm hoping that in four months the play's subject matter will have exceeded its expiration date and be on its way home to Crawford.
The Nation published the scene before the war started, and so did the Guardian in London. Some people got angry about it, including Page Six of the New York Post, a columnist in Boston and, to my surprise, a number of readers of the Nation. Others took me up on the offer I made in the Nation and they did the play at antiwar rallies around the country. Marcia Gay Harden has played Laura Bush on several occasions; the last time, she was eight and a half months pregnant -- with twins! Just like Laura! No one is more thorough than Marcia Gay when it comes to preparing for a part. In London, Vanessa Redgrave played Laura Bush. One trade union group did the scene in Seattle and invited Laura Bush herself to take part in the reading, playing herself. Her office didn't respond to the invitation.
But I have connections, and so when John Cameron Mitchell asked for permission to do the play tonight, for a benefit for MoveOn, I said yes and I immediately called my very good friend, Antonin Scalia, with whom I have on several occasions gone duck-hunting in my home state of Louisiana. Two guys can really bond, even across a rather formidable ideological divide, when they're squatting together in chilly yet fetid swamp water, semiautomatic weapons at the ready for the first sign of dawn and a flying duck. Antonin Scalia's son Rusty worked for the Bush campaign in 2000, back when his father overturned the Florida Supreme Court's decision to let the vote count proceed, thus handing the election to Mrs. Bush's husband, so everyone knows everyone, it's a small world, so I asked Antonin and he asked his son Rusty who asked Mrs. Bush and, though she declined our invitation to play herself, she said she'd love to talk about the play and so here she is, the first lady of the United States, if you believe her husband actually is the legally elected president of the United States, and he isn't -- but anyway, what's a stolen state or a corrupt Supreme Court decision between friends? -- Ladies and Gentlemen and Supporters of MoveOn: the first lady of the United States, Laura Welch Bush.
[Laura Bush enters.]
TK: Thank you for coming here tonight.
LAURA BUSH: My pleasure, I guess. I didn't like your skit very much.
TK: No, I didn't think you would.
LB: It was sort of insulting, and at times I felt the writing was really muddleheaded, and of course I'm nothing like that.
TK: No, well, it's a work of fiction.
LB: Uh-huh. But you know, I think if a portrait painter said that about somebody's portrait, by way of explaining why it looks nothing whatsoever like the person it was intended to represent, then I think we would say the painter had, well, failed.
TK: Maybe, but I...
LB: And now you're gonna say you didn't intend an accurate portrait. You had some other purpose in mind and...
TK: Yes, well, actually that's...
LB: Uh-huh, and what would you say that is? That purpose?
TK: Well...
LB: Because...
TK: I think I...
LB: Because it wasn't at all clear to me. Only thing that came through, so far as I could tell, was intense hatred, um, irrational antipathy toward me and my husband, who just drives people like you straight round the bend. Doesn't he?
TK: I'm not sure it's an irrational antipathy toward him, and I don't really feel antipathy for...
LB: And of course it was rather crude, and unflattering, and well, then you got a drag queen to play me, just in case...
TK: Actually...
LB: Just in case anyone missed the point, which is...
TK: Actually, John Cameron Mitchell is an established and highly respected New York stage actor and a prize-winning film director...
LB: Well I never heard of him.
