Tony Kushner- HIDE THE BODIES!

[Corine2]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 11:20pm

I just came back from seeing Peace and Dissent.
Two things: Tony Kushner is really best at Political things.
Hide The Bodies hit me hard. I cried. It was more moving then Caroline or Change.
Ms Seldes, is a lady and a wonderful actress. It was another moving night of theater.
Thanks to Mr.Kushner.
PEACE!

[BlueWizard]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 11:22pm

Is this a free work-in-progress like "We Who Guard the Mystery....", or an old full-fledged work of his?

[Corine2]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 11:25pm

It is called: Hide The Bodies. Genius. The man is a genius.
My god Namo is right. He is one of the greatest writers of all time.
I liked this piece much more then Angels In America.
IT HIT ME HARD.

[nystateomind04]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 11:32pm

More info, Corine- you are entirely too vauge!

For starters, what is it about?

[the-one-you-want]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 11:38pm

OH. HOLY. MERCY.
I need a review of this show. I've been waiting ever since Kushner announced he was writing it.
Whats the plot? How does the story move? How was the diaologue? What was the final theme? PLEASE! Facts!
Thanks hun

[nystateomind04]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 11:42pm

Dido.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 12:22am

HIDE THE BODIES is not a play, a dramatic work or a monologue from a play but a political speech written by Tony Kushner as his contribution to the group THAW, Theatres Against War, a coalition of 206 theatres in 13 countries opposed to the war in Iraq. THAW asked several playwrights to contribute curtain speeches to be used by their member theatres. Kushner contributed two including one called "Hide The Bodies," the text of which follows (a good political speech to be sure, but hardly something that can be in any way shape or form compared to Kushner's sublime and utterly masterful achievements in "Angels In America," Corine).

Note to Rob and Craig -- I don't believe there are any copyright issues with including the entire text. Kushner and the site make it very clear that they want all of the speeches disseminated far and wide and no one need apparently ask permission to do so (There's even a note to Kushner's two contributions "these are both very long and Tony says feel free to cut 'em!"):


"Hide the bodies. That's the trick the Bush administration is playing, it's the trick his father played during the First Gulf War when the press and human rights groups and international monitoring groups weren't allowed to cover the human consequences of the war, when bulldozers driven by American soldiers buried Iraqi soldiers in mass graves before body counts could be made, sometimes before anyone could be sure that the people we were burying were actually dead. Hide the bodies, it's the trick people like Bush and all his fellow enthusiasts for war have mastered, all the radical right ideologues he's surrounded by, all the looney fundamentalists he appoints to jobs like Attorney General, all the grim children of right-wing think tanks who do his thinking for him and all the veterans of the catastrophe of Reaganism - the agendas of which a majority of the American people have rejected in three consecutive presidential elections - all his henchmen, and the quisling Congress which quivers and quakes before Bush's war lust, they've all learned this trick, they play it on us and they play it on themselves, HIDE THE BODIES - they used it recently in Afghanistan, they're using it now when they say the Afghan war is won, it's the trick all the pseudo-generals we hear so IMPATIENT to attack Iraq, so eager to bomb Baghdad, learned after Vietnam: no body counts. No film footage of mutilated children.

Hide the bodies. Don't mention dead people, don't mention corpses. Don't mention horrific irrecoverable injuries, bloodshed or disease, nuclear poisoning from the depleted uranium used to coat our ammunition, environmental holocaust from burning oilfields, starvation, landmines, the uncontrolled proliferation of war, the terrifying possibility of nuclear bombs deployed, by us, by Israel, by Pakistan, by who knows who. Don't talk about the mess we're making in Asia, with North Korea, by our imbecilic name-calling nondiplomacy and our abandonment of nuclear disarmament. Don't talk about what the war will cost, don't talk about the cost and the immorality and absurdity of trying to maintain this planned colonial occupation of another country - if indeed anything at all is planned - Don't talk about the consequences of destabilizing the region, the planet, shattering every diplomatic alliance as recklessly, as easily as we've discarded treaty after treaty, refused international accords, made ourselves appear a rogue superpower bully with transparently imperial ambitions, as relentlessly as we've tried to prevent the establishment of an International Criminal Court, as remorselessly as we've helped destroy any chance for a peaceful solution to the mayhem in Israel and the Occupied Territories by refusing to go back to the table to talk a real and a just peace, guaranteed survival for Israel and real statehood for the Palestinian people.

Don't talk about peace talks, don't talk about peace, talk all about how Jesus is your favorite philosopher but don't talk about how you never bothered reading the Sermon on the Mount, talk about Jesus and God but don't talk about peace. Don't talk about the people in the United States who will die because of the further dismantling of our already preposterously inadequate social net, the children we won't educate, the critical infrastructures and environmental damage we won't repair as we channel the few dollars we haven't given back to the super-rich, to the Bush family, into the bottomless pit of the task at hand, namely first devastating an already-devastated Iraq and then occupying it. And never, never never mention the thousands of Iraqi lives absolutely guaranteed to be lost if we bomb Baghdad and Basra. Here's what you talk about, and it's better if you do it in the homely Texas accent, in the fratboy punchy garbled cracker speech of our unelected non-President: Are you annoyed with Saddam Hussein? Are you exasperated? Are you worried that someone might be making nerve gas somewhere and that it might get released on a NYC subway? THEN LET'S GET THIS WAR GOING! WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

Bush thinks if he hides the bodies, if he never even mentions the probability of American lives lost, if he calls this mass slaughter he's pushing us into a GAME, if he says THE GAME IS OVER, the American people will join him in this folly, this madness, this crime, this mass murder. This is, after all, a man whose great accomplishment as Governor was making sure you could carry concealed weapons into church and speeding up the pace of executions by limiting inmates' right to appeal death sentences, this is after all a man who publically mocked a woman he was about to put to death, this is the "compassionate conservative" who still can't resist smirking, and the whole world has seen his smirk, has heard his smirking, the whole world recoils in embarrassment and disgust when he opens his mouth, when he talks about something as dreadful, as costly, as bloody as war as if he were talking about touch football or keg parties.

But Bush is wrong about America, he's wrong about the American people. Who isn't annoyed? Who isn't exasperated? Who doesn't think Saddam's a disgusting dictator? Who isn't scared nowadays? We know the world's in terrible shape, we're New Yorkers, we're smart people, we're not Bushes, we've known the world is in terrible shape for a long time now, and we know what war means, and we know when peaceful solutions have been exhausted, and we know when they have only barely been tried, and we know how important it is to remember the bodies, to remember the dead, to remember the human bloody cost of war, and so we say no to this war, we say no to Bush's obscene eagerness for war. We do not trust him and we do not trust his cronies and we do not trust his motives and so we say no to War, to Imperialism, to his dismantling of our democracy, our republic, our nascent global civilization. We say NO to Bush and we say YES to peace and we know that the millions upon millions of people the world over who are marching and meeting and fundraising and seeking all means possible to oppose this war, to AFFIRM LIFE AND PEACE are not the endpoint of our resistance but the beginning. Our strength is enormous, our voice is enormous, and if we shout PEACE! PEACE! PEACE! and keep shouting it, peace and justice will prevail. "
http://www.thawaction.org/thaw16.html

Updated On: 8/31/04 at 12:22 AM

[little_sally]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 1:03am

The man is a genius.

[Sumofallthings]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 2:13am

If you remove the words Tony Kushner from the thread subject and replace them with George Dubya Bush you have the theme for the RNC.

[the-one-you-want]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 2:28am

Yes, Tony is a genuis, and i'd also like to thank margo channing for the perpetual quick, intelligent advice.

[Sumofallthings]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 2:34am

Quick?

[Unknown User]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 2:39am

Yes, Sum, quick. Margo's reply came only about an hour after the original post was made - and in one post covered every question posed, potential issues with the moderators - and even contained a full text of the piece in question for individual perusal and analysis. NO ONE else does anything like this on these boards, and we are lucky to have Margo's willingness and interest.

[the-one-you-want]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 2:55am

Hey, did you guys hear about Tony's new show--well, reading I guess--going up? Holly Hunter is starring as Tony Kushners incarnation of Laura Bush. In an earlier reading done this summer, John Cameron Mitchell (Oh Hedwig fame) played the same role. My friend's seeing it in october(?) but I'm wondering if anyone else has caught wind of the production.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 8/31/04 at 2:58am

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?thread=271913#286210 Updated On: 8/31/04 at 02:58 AM