The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures

By Tony Kushner

• World premiere at Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 2009. New York premiere at The Public Theater in 2010 (co-produced with Signature Theatre). West coast premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2014.

• Has been notoriously and extensively revised between each of the above productions.

• Title is a reference from the work of George Bernard Shaw (“The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism”) and to Mary Baker Eddy (“Key to the Scriptures”)

• Highly anticipated and publicized new play from Tony Kushner, renowned playwright, author and screenwriter.

• Pulitzer Prize winner for Angels in America, which also earned two Tony Awards for Best Play, among many other honors.

• Won an Emmy Award for adapting Angels in America into an HBO miniseries, directed by Mike Nichols and featuring a star-studded cast that included Meryl Streep and Al Pacino

• Two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Munich (2005, directed by Steven Spielberg) and Lincoln (2012, directed by Steven Spielberg)

• Is collaborating with Spielberg for the third time on the film The Kidnapping of Edgardo Montara, for which Kushner wrote the screenplay. No production date has been announced.

• Received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781559368001

Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner is Professor in History and director of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton

Book preview

THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL’S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES

★

PRODUCTION HISTORY

The play in its current state was developed over the course of four productions. I’m deeply indebted to everyone involved:

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures received its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater (Joe Dowling, Artistic Director) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 22, 2009. It was directed by Michael Greif, the set design was by Mark Wendland, the costume design was by Clint Ramos, the lighting design was by Kevin Adams, the sound design was by Ken Travis, the original music was by Michael Friedman; the dramaturg was Jo Holcomb and the stage manager was Martha Kulig. The cast was:

*The character’s name was subsequently changed to Clio.

iHo received its New York premiere in a co-production by The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Joey Parnes, Interim Executive Director) and Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) on May 5, 2011. It was directed by Michael Greif, the set design was by Mark Wendland, the costume design was by Clint Ramos, the lighting design was by Kevin Adams, the sound design was by Ken Travis, the original music was by Michael Friedman; the production stage manager was Martha Donaldson. The cast was:

iHo was produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Tony Taccone, Artistic Director; Susan Medak, Managing Director) on May 21, 2014. It was directed by Tony Taccone, the set design was by Christopher Barecca, the costume design was by Meg Neville, the lighting design was by Alexander V. Nichols, the sound design was by Jake Rodriguez; the stage manager was Michael Suenkel. The cast was:

iHo received its UK premiere at Hampstead Theatre (Edward Hall, Artistic Director; Greg Ripley-Duggan, Executive Director) in London, on October 15, 2016. It was directed by Michael Boyd, the set design was by Tom Piper, the lighting design was by Wolfgang Goebbel, the sound design was by Fergus O’Hare; the stage manager was Michael Dennis. The cast was:

CHARACTERS

PILL MARCANTONIO (PierLuigi = P.L. = Pill), 53, Italian-American, high school history teacher, Gus’s son

ELI, mid-20s, a hustler

PAUL DAVIS, 47, African-American, formerly an assistant professor of theology at Columbia University/Union Theological Seminary, now a visiting lecturer at the University of Minnesota, Pill’s husband

CLIO MARCANTONIO (sometimes called Zeeko [Zia Clio = Aunt Clio] by her nephews and niece), 69, Italian-American, former Discalced Carmelite nun, former Maoist, Gus’s sister

V MARCANTONIO (Vito = Vin, Vic, Vinnie, V), 38, Italian-American, building contractor, Gus’s son

EMPTY MARCANTONIO (Maria Teresa = M.T. = Empty), 49, Italian-American, formerly a nurse, now a labor lawyer, Gus’s daughter

GUS MARCANTONIO, 72, Italian-American, retired longshoreman, lifetime member of the Communist Party USA

MAEVE LUDENS, 40, Doctor of Theology, same-sex partner of Empty

SOOZE MOON MARCANTONIO, early 30s, Korean-American, wife of V

ADAM HERVEY, early 50s, real-estate lawyer, Empty’s ex-husband

MICHELLE O’NEILL, 40s, called Shelle, Irish-American

SETTING

The play takes place in Gus Marcantonio’s brownstone on Clinton Street, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, with side trips to a couple of locations in Manhattan, from Friday–Sunday, June 15–17, 2007.

AN INTRODUCTION, AN APOLOGY, A USER’S GUIDE

A Note for Actors and Readers Regarding Dashes, Ellipses, Indents and Overlapping Dialogue

Plays are written to be read. That’s their primary purpose, in the sense that reading is the first thing that happens to a play after it’s written. Obviously most plays are written ultimately to be performed, but before that, they’re read by the people who’ll perform them. They’ll also be read by people who don’t perform, including some who are entirely uninterested in theater, for whom the theatrical life of a play is less meaningful than its life as literature, as something to be read.

A play’s theatrical life is intermittent; following every production, the play enters theatrical limbo, where it lingers till its next staging, if there is one. That’s why subsequent productions are called revivals—the play’s revivified, it’s brought back to life. Its continuous, uninterrupted existence is in print, as a book. If a play has longevity, it has its readers, more than its watchers, to thank.

The way a play’s dialogue is laid out on the page, the idiosyncratic punctuation playwrights often employ, the thickness or thinness of stage directions: these are clues and signals from the playwright to people who may stage the play, as well as to readers who have no intention of doing so. The playwright hopes these effects will give a reader, sitting alone with a book, an approximation of the electricity and velocity of the play in performance. That imagined performance is not the whole purpose of reading a play. A reader can stop a play’s narrative, even reverse it; she can linger, ponder, dig down deep, analyze with control over the forward momentum which holds theater audiences in thrall. A reader has a better chance of understanding certain complex aspects of a play than has an audience member. Even so, any reader of a play is likely to imagine it on its feet, compelled by the oddness, the open-endedness, the severe economies and blank spaces of the dramatic literary form. And the reverse is true: In performance, the paper play haunts its theater audience, troubling the audience’s experience of what appears to be a succession of spontaneous events with an awareness that what they’re witnessing is spontaneous-yet-not; what unfolds before them is also an elaborate kind of reading-aloud of a printed, fixed text.

This is what I love about reading and watching and writing plays, this ambiguous, amphibious, boundary-crossing quality that’s part of theater’s unceasing incompleteness, theater’s particular dialectical dynamism. I feel that no play is fully realized until it’s published, in print, available to readers.

I write this by way of an apology in advance to the readers of this play. It’s the only play of mine that wasn’t published after its first production. There are a few reasons for this, addressed in the afterword; one cause of the long delay has been a struggle to make the play readerly. I believe it mostly is. But there are passages—in Act One, Scene Two; Act Two, Scene One; and Act Two, Scene Four—during which several people are onstage, speaking at the same time, and even in less densely populated scenes, the characters—a passionate, articulate, but not particularly polite bunch—tend to speak over one another. I’ve tried various ways to notate these exchanges, finally returning to the method I’d originally employed, which requires placing some lines out of sequence and breaking up others. This presents you, the reader, with the task of deciphering and reassembling. It isn’t hard to do (it helps if you enjoy jigsaw puzzles). But the effort required may make these scenes read as effortful, which I believe is not the case when they’re performed.

I hope the following guidelines will be useful to you as you read:

When a character’s line ends in a dash, the character is stopping abruptly, either because s/he has been interrupted or is interrupting her- or himself.

When a line ends in an ellipsis, the character trails off, leaving something unfinished or unsaid.

When there’s an indentation within a speech, it indicates a slight break in the flow of the character’s speaking, owing to an internally generated change in subject or tactic.

When a character’s line ends with (cont’d below:), find the character’s next line; the character’s name will be followed by (cont’d from above). This means that the character speaks continuously, with no pause between the end of one line and the beginning of the next. For example, in Act One, Scene One:

PILL

You asked me about …

(He stops, upset. He takes a breath.)

Good plays, had I seen good plays in Minneapolis. So,

yes— (cont’d below:)

ELI

But I—Do you think your dad’s seriously—

PILL (cont’d from above)

Major Barbara. George Bernard— (cont’d below:)

ELI

I know who wrote—

PILL (cont’d from above)

—Shaw. It’s—I don’t go out, much, I’m not supposed to etc., etc.

Pill says, "Good plays, had I seen good plays in Minneapolis. So, yes, Major Barbara. George Bernard Shaw. It’s—I don’t go out, much, I’m not supposed to etc., etc.," speaking uninterruptedly. Immediately after Pill says, So, yes— Eli says, But I—Do you think your dad’s seriously— while Pill keeps talking, and when Pill says, George Bernard— Eli says, I know who wrote— while Pill continues to talk.

The dash following Pill’s George Bernard— is not indicative of Pill being interrupted, or changing the subject. He’ll go on uninterruptedly to —Shaw. In such instances, a dash merely indicates the point at which another character will begin speaking, rather than an interruption.

When a character’s name is followed by (over above), the character starts talking at the end of the line above the line that immediately precedes his or her line. For example:

GUS (to Empty)

What are you all of a sudden a, a neurologist? (cont’d below:)

PILL

It was like 1986 when he died. Wasn’t Reagan president?

EMPTY (over above, to Gus)

Have you been to a neurologist?

Empty will say, Have you been to a neurologist? immediately after Gus asks her, What are you all of a sudden, a, a neurologist? —She’ll speak over Pill asking, It was like 1986 when he died. Wasn’t Reagan president?

When two characters’ lines are presented side-by-side, as in the example above, both characters speak at the same time, at the end of the line that precedes their lines. After Empty says, Have you been to a neurologist? Clio will say, No. He won’t go, and V will say, No, simultaneously.

When stretches of dialogue are presented in dual columns, each column is played independently of the other, at its own pace. For example:

EMPTY

But she didn’t come. (cont’d below:)

GUS (still to Pill)

Well I forgot then!

PILL

I’ve been asking since since since graduate school!

After Empty says, But she didn’t come, Pill asks Gus, What papers? while Empty continues with, I’m really sorry, Zeeko. Pill and Gus argue about the strike papers while Empty, Clio and V talk about Maeve’s pregnancy and V’s semen. Each of these exchanges should take close to the same time to complete, but adjustments in pace may be necessary to make sure that V has finished saying Up yours, asshole, just … before Gus interrupts Pill with Well I forgot then!

Actors and directors who plan to stage the play, and anyone curious about some of the technical challenges presented by the overlapping dialogue, are encouraged to read the Playwright’s Notes that begin on page 273. Or, well, I encourage curious people to read these notes; I implore actors and directors to read them!

Two pennies will buy a rose.

Three pennies and who can tell?

—LAURA NYRO, BUY AND SELL

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

Late afternoon, June 15, 2007, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Pill is standing at the foot of the stoop in front of his father’s brownstone, speaking into his cell phone.

Eli’s on his cell phone (it’s a brand-new iPhone, first-generation!) somewhere in Manhattan.

ELI

So.

Any good theater in Minneapolis?

PILL

When can I see you?

ELI

Ummmm … Not tonight.

PILL

You’re … ?

ELI

Engaged. Otherwise.

PILL

Booked.

ELI

Yep. Yyyyyyyep.

PILL

You said you wouldn’t, you weren’t going to—

ELI

No, I—

PILL

Yes you did, Eli, you said—

ELI

How’s your dad?

(Pill looks up quickly at the windows on the parlor floor.)

ELI

I have to get going.

PILL

Please. After you— (cont’d below:)

ELI

It’ll be really late, I— (cont’d below:)

PILL (cont’d from above)

Please can I?

ELI (cont’d from above)

I don’t think we should.

PILL

We’re going to discuss it.

ELI

Discuss … ? (cont’d below:)

PILL

His decision, we— (cont’d below:)

ELI (cont’d from above)

Oh, his—What he wants to do.

PILL (cont’d from above)

We’re going to talk.

The family.

A family talk.

ELI

Is he actually gonna—Do you think he’s serious? About—

PILL

Major Barbara.

ELI

Who?

PILL

You asked me about …

(He stops, upset. He takes a breath.)

Good plays, had I seen good plays in Minneapolis. So, yes— (cont’d below:)

ELI

But I—Do you think your dad’s seriously—

PILL (cont’d from above)

Major Barbara. George Bernard— (cont’d below:)

ELI

I know who wrote—

PILL (cont’d from above)

—Shaw. It’s—I don’t go out, much, I’m not supposed to, they want me to curtail my socializing without Paul. And Paul doesn’t like, he’s never liked theater, he’s—Film. Sometimes he wants to go to a film, so long as it’s you know underlit or over-exposed, so long as there’s no pleasure to be derived from it.

But we went to see Major Barbara, and it was good, you know, Shaw!— (cont’d below:)

ELI

Yeah, we read him in Twentieth Century Something-Or-Other.

PILL (cont’d from above)

Spinning his contradictions. Dizzying, a head rush, sort of like, sort of like—oh I dunno, poppers, or speed or E or—

(Eli laughs. Pill’s pleased at that.)

PILL

Or an infarction. Fun! But then, I don’t know, my early training kicks in: It’s gradualism! Blech! It’s the emasculation of the working class by a sentimental pseudo-socialist, peddling an idealist conception of history!

ELI

Oh yeah, baby, talk commie talk to—

PILL

No, ugh, bleah, I hate it when I—

Some asshole’s