Denis O'Hare Joins Tony Kushner, Rachel Maddow, Elizabeth Marvel for Public Forum Today

The Public Theater announced that Tony Award winner Denis O'Hare has joined the next Public Forum Drama Club, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy by Tony Kushner, tonight, November 3 at 7:00 p.m. at Joe's Pub, continuing the fourth season of PUBLIC FORUM.

Tony Kushner's Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, will be read and discussed by Denis O'Hare (The Angel); Rachel Maddow (Actor 1); and Elizabeth Marvel (Laura Bush). In Kushner's provocative 2003 play, First Lady Laura Bush reads a passage from Dostoyevsky to Iraqi children who were killed in American air strikes. Afterwards, Kushner and the cast will discuss the morality of U.S. foreign policy and the extent to which we share responsibility for our leaders' actions.

Single tickets for the Public Forum Drama Club event, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, are on sale now, starting at $50, and can be purchased at (212) 967-7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. The Library at The Public is open nightly for food and drink, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

This inaugural fall season of the new Public Forum series Drama Club will conclude on Tuesday, December 10 at 7:00 p.m. with a reading and discussion of Thornton Wilder's The Long Christmas Dinner at Joe's Pub. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, the popular PUBLIC FORUM series presents the theater of ideas: conversations and performances with leading voices in politics, media, and the arts.

In Public Forum Drama Club, authors, musicians, journalists, scholars, and actors will come together to give onstage readings of one-act plays that have some special resonance in our lives today. Each reading will conclude with a discussion of the hard questions that the play raises about our politics, our culture, and the way we live now.

PUBLIC FORUM presents the theater of ideas. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, this series of conversations and performances features leading voices in politics, media, and the arts. Alec Baldwin, Anne Hathaway, Cynthia Nixon, Sam Waterston, and former NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman have hosted its programs, which have featured the insights of Kurt Andersen, David Brooks, David Byrne, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Tony Kushner, Rachel Maddow, Wynton Marsalis, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, David Simon, Anna Deavere Smith, Stephen Sondheim, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the culture writers of New York Magazine, and young veterans of the war in Afghanistan - plus performances by Christine Baranski, Matt Damon, Holly Hunter, Wendell Pierce, and Vanessa Redgrave, among others. Current Forum programs include Public Forum Drama Club, Public Forum Duets, Public Forum Solos, and the Public Forum Podcast.

DENIS O'HARE most recently appeared at The Public in the free Shakespeare in the Park production of Into the Woods, as well as Take Me Out; Silence, Cunning, Exile; Helen; and Woyzeck. His Broadway credits include Take Me Out (Tony, Drama Desk, OCC, Obie, and Lortel Awards), Assassins (Tony nomination), Sweet Charity (Drama Desk Award), Inherit the Wind, Major Barbara, Cabaret, and Elling. His additional theater credits include Uncle Vanya and An Iliad (written and adapted with Lisa Peterson). He has appeared on film in Dallas Buyer's Club, C.O.G., J. Edgar, Changeling, Michael Clayton, The Proposal, Edge of Darkness, An Englishman in New York, Baby Mama, Charlie Wilson's War, Half Nelson, Garden State, Sweet and Lowdown, The Eagle, 21 Grams, Milk, and the upcoming The Normal Heart. His select television credits include "American Horror Story: Coven"; "American Horror Story" (Emmy nomination); "True Blood"; and "Once Upon a Mattress."

Tony Kushner's plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Angels in America, Parts One and Two; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; the musical Caroline, or Change and the opera A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, both with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide To Capitalism And Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures. He has adapted and translated Pierre Corneille's The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the English-language libretto for the opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film of Angels In America, and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln. His books include Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak, 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, among other honors.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski