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Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak imbue a pair of Holocaust-era operas with vibrant fantasy
Call it a May-December partnership. Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak-two iconic American artists with 28 years separating them in age-have become more than just close personal friends. The playwright and author-illustrator of children's books have discovered themselves to be unlikely yet fruitful collaborators.
An anecdote Kushner relates in his commentary for the critical retrospective The An of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present sheds some light on the relationship. "I learned [Maurice] never uses his fireplace," writes Kushner. "I told him, 'I use mine every chance I get!' He replied, 'You, you're an emancipated Jew, you don't know that fire will kill you! I will never unlearn that!'" This exchange hints at their age difference-and it also highlights much of what unites them: a deeply felt sense of identity as American Jews, colored by a long history of both profound suffering and the hope of spiritual emancipation.
"Our Jewishness has become a big part of our connection," says Kushner of the "unexpected friendship" he has shared for the past 15 years with Sendak. "Neither of us are religious people, but we share a deep, affectionate bond to Judaism. I have a real affinity for the world that Maurice comes from, because it is the world of my mother and father, who grew up in the Depression as the children of Jewish immigrants." Sendak and his generation are the first American-born descendants of those to whom Kushner pays loving tribute in the first scene of Angels in America-the European refugees who "carried the old world on [their] back across the ocean, in a boat," whose unsquelchable desire for a decent life sent them on "such Great Voyages [which] in this world do not any more exist." A common heritage of struggle and steadfast faith disposes both men to view the world as "pessimistic optimists," as Kushner puts it, "or maybe optimistic pessimists."
Such spiritual kinship fuels a rich creative synergy between these two artists, whose works might not seem so similar at first glance: Kushner, a Pulitzer-winner for his "gay fantasia on national themes" and Sendak, creator of the indelible wolf-suited boy named Max and his imagined world of Wild Things. But...