BEHIND THE SCENES
YouTube Playlist of backstage videos by actor Brian Landis Folkins
From the Script: A family timeline appendix by Tony Kushner

TONY KUSHNER, THE PLAYWRIGHT
Tony Kushner, at Peace? Not Exactly. But Close. – NY Times, March 2018
Tony Kushner: ‘To love someone puts you at the risk of loss’ – The Guardian, May 2017
The World is Never Simply One Thing: An Interview with Tony Kushner – Yale Literary Magazine, Spring 2013
Tony Kushner, The Art of Theater No. 16 – Paris Review, Summer 2012
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Himself – New Yorker, October 2010

DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY RECOMMENDS
Our friends at the library have curated a listing of resources for you to read, listen and watch related to the play.

HISTORY OF THE “-ISMS”
Socialism… Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation
Book: The Meaning of Marxism
Series of Foundational Articles on Socialism
Article from the New Yorker: Karl Marx: Yesterday and Today by Louis Menand

WHAT THE CAST IS READING
How American’s culture wars have evolved into a class war By James Davidson Hunter
The Liberal Crackup By Mark Lilla

In Media

• Review: Tall Tales, Telluride Inside

  by Mark Stevens, Telluride Inside

  It’s stellar. Given the challenging material, the rich layers of ideas, the Curious Theatre Company pulls off a major feat. Given the rapid-fire dialogue, and many scenes where voices are firing and the verbal bullets are flying all at the same time, this troupe’s collective performance is top notch.

• Review: Colorado Drama

  by Bob Bows, ColoradoDrama.com

  Intellectually speaking, the play is Kushner's most ambitious to date, encompassing a serious examination of many social, political, economic, psychological, sexual, spiritual, and existential questions. As always, Kushner's writing is dense with historical references, yet it never ceases being poetic, mesmerizing, and remarkably structured, including several sections that take dialogue cross-hatching to never-before-attained heights. Hecht is brilliant in subtly unveilling Gus' complex analytical cosmology, as well as his convoluted connections to his sister, adult children, and their spouses and lovers; and, Hecht's comfort with Kushner's historical and multi-cultural details—from Horace to Hegel, from Dante to Dialectical Materialism—is genuinely all-consuming; which, together, create a natural arc for Gus' existential crisis.

• Review: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide Is Hard, Rewarding Work

  by Juliet Wittman, Westword

  The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures is one huge, nourishing and gut-punching wallop of an evening... I loved the scope and ambition of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide, and the language that makes you want to acquire the script and, having read it cover to cover, watch the play again. In an era when — as Gus laments — working people seem to have lost all power, it says so much about the now-overlooked history of labor and the once prevalent dream of equality, and says it with hard-eyed wisdom rather than dreamy romanticism.

• REVIEW: Denver Theatre Perspectives

  by Owen Niland, Denver Theatre Perspectives

  Certain scenes of the production are themselves a master class in theatrical staging. Walton elegantly choreographs the family’s ongoing and, more often than not, overlapping conversations. In an operatic manner, especially in the second act, Watson conducts upwards of nine of the eleven actors in the production on stage at once in competing escalating arguments, while never letting the cacophony of individual performances overwhelm the interpersonal relationships Kushner’s script strives to build.

• Cup of coffee with … Curious Theatre’s Lawrence Hecht

  by John Moore, DCPA NewsCenter

  "[Kushner is an incredible wordsmith and a great poet. But I think it really is the daring and the sheer audacity of his writing that sets him apart. He makes the issues and the world we live in accessible to people who would perhaps otherwise be put off by the topics he writes about." - Lawrence Hecht

• Review: Curious Theatre’s challenging “Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide”

  by Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post

  The Marcantonio family is headed by Gus, a former longshoreman and labor organizer who gathers the brood to announce his intention to commit suicide. (Lawrence Hecht, longtime Denver Center head of acting, gives a touching, beautifully measured performance as the patriarch.)