Few would dispute that playwright Tony Kushner has risen to international stardom because of -- not in spite of -- his politics.

While all of his works -- from the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America to his newest production, Homebody/Kabul -- are so accessible because of Kushner's humanistic tendencies, the politics behind those plays are never subtle.

Kushner has tackled HIV and AIDS with Angels, questioned capitalism in post-Cold War Russia with Slavs! and explored the treatment of the people of Afghanistan in Homebody/Kabul, which was written not long before Sept. 11.

Kushner has always stressed that his works are plays, not political vehicles. But politics are at the heart of his work, so it comes as no surprise that a discussion with Kushner focused as much on the state of the world as his own writings.

Saturday, Kushner spoke with The Daily Collegian by telephone from New York and discussed such matters as the global economy and Angels in America's impact on college campuses; the School of Theatre is performing the play today and tomorrow at the Playhouse in the Arts Building.

The Daily Collegian: Angels in America isn't any less popular today than it was in the early '90s, when you wrote it, but it takes place in New York during the 1980s. Can a production here at Penn State reach audiences the way it can on Broadway?

Tony Kushner: When I was in college there were plays that weren't so good and there were plays that were absolutely astonishing. As long as it's got good people behind it, then it can do what it's supposed to do -- be a sophisticated, complex form of entertainment. I think that too often people make the mistake that, if there's a political voice, they think of it as a tool of non-theatrical consequence. It's not. It's a play.

DC: In the past you've said, "Preaching to the converted is exactly what art ought to do." This campus has recently hosted presentations of Angels and Slavs! and presumably at least some of the attendees were students looking for entertainment and not necessarily "the converted." How do you reach that audience?

TK: People who are deeply reactionary against anything that discusses socialism -- except when it's portrayed in the most terrible way -- will not like Slavs! My job is not to presume an audience of completely blank slates. So if I write a play that only says it's OK to be gay, it'd be tedious. There are enormous amounts of people who are already accepting of gays and there are issues beyond that to write about. I knew it was OK to be gay 20 years ago, so I have no interest in gearing this play toward a right-wing Republican homophobe.

You can't write about issues you know and that are a part of you and pretend that no one has an understanding. There is so much more to be done in three hours, like asking why gays aren't enfranchised in the United States. If I'm just trying to convince people that being gay is OK, then I'm wasting time.

DC: You spoke here at Penn State in March of 1997 and told students that "every nation on earth reads Marx except Americans." In light of last September, are your audiences as comfortable with such sentiments?

TK: I think there are a lot of people who will agree that right now the world is in dreadful shape. I'm not going around with a simple message -- Slavs! is not an endorsement of socialism. It asks whether there are alternatives to capitalism, and that's a question that a lot of people are asking.

The people asking that question have been misidentified. They are not anti-global, they're looking for a democratization of the global community. So people are still listening. And remember, those people who are looking for alternatives to capitalism are part of a student movement for which I hope my plays have a value; Homebody/Kabul looks at international structures and international interconnectedness.

DC: Is Angels as relevant now, as AIDS death rates are declining?

TK: There are unacceptably high rates of infection right now for gay men and people of color in the United States right now, and on a pandemic or global scale we have reached a level unprecedented in human history. Look at Africa, India and China. Africa should be a model for what will happen to third-world countries if we don't start paying attention. There is a 50 percent adult infection rate and no access to the triple cocktails that have slowed death rates here. I think we learned a lot from 9-11, and one of those things is that trouble elsewhere washes up on our shores. We can't assume that AIDS spreading elsewhere won't affect us here. And even if we don't sympathize with the people elsewhere, from a selfish perspective it makes sense to deal with this now. We are rapidly entering an era where we're transparently intertwined with the rest of the world. That's no longer an ideological issue, that's a fact.

We need leaders who will act. If we had a president who could talk about international issues in a context other than good versus evil and not be this combination of Texas cowboy and Biblical figure, and who dealt with things like a grown-up, that would be great.

DC: Sen. Jesse Helms recently said AIDS needs to be dealt with, but he'll only give money to Africa, not his own state of North Carolina. Is that real progress?

TK: He's at some end-of-life crossroads. What's with him holding hands with (former U.S. Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright and hanging out with Bono? Really, I think he just likes hanging out at rock concerts. I don't think these issues really matter to him any more now than they did before. People like him and others in the Republican Party have talked about third-world debt forgiveness and things like that for a long time and done nothing about it. Helms is kind of over. He's finally going to retire and now we need to look at people like (Sen.) Trent Lott and (Speaker of the House of Representatives) Dennis Hastert a little harder.

DC: So with so much in the world to worry about, where do you find encouragement?

TK: It's a pretty dark time, but I'm encouraged by the anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) movement. These people are determined to have an effect internationally and that's pretty exciting. And there are environmental groups and civil libertarians out there doing important work, trying to stop the people who want to strike down the environment and our Bill of Rights. Look, 9-11 was a tremendous trauma, but people's responses have been impressively varied. People have not been cowed by (Attorney General) John Ashcroft and President Bush telling them that they're traitors if they support the energy task force that's gone after Dick Cheney. I can't pretend we'll all be OK, and who the hell knows what's going to happen because this world is trying to explode, but I have hope. People all over the planet have responded positively, and if people can find ways of expressing dissent beside blowing themselves up in crowded marketplaces, then this planet still has a chance.