Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner, born in 1956, American playwright, best known for his two-part epic drama Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1993). His plays reflect an interest in political activism and the writings of German political philosopher Karl Marx, Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and German dramatist Bertolt Brecht.

Kushner was born in New York City and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Encouraged by his parents, both of whom were musicians, he became interested in theater at a young age. He attended Columbia University and New York University, earning degrees in medieval studies and theater. Kushner began writing and producing plays in the 1980s with a theater group he had founded. His first major play, A Bright Room Called Day (1985), which draws parallels between Germany in the 1930s and the United States in the 1980s, was produced in several regional theaters throughout the United States.

Kushner gained international prominence and won critical acclaim with the first part of Angels in America, titled Millennium Approaches (1991). In 1993 it won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play. The second part of Angels in America, Perestroika (1993), won Kushner a second Tony for best play (1994). Millennium Approaches and Perestroika follow the lives of eight characters over a six-year period, chronicling their attitudes towards homosexuality and the effects of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) on their relationships. Slavs! (Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness) (1994), a short play about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under former president Mikhail Gorbachev, was performed at Actor's Theater of Louisville, Kentucky, and the New York Theater Workshop.

Other plays by Kushner include the dance-theater piece La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse (1982); Yes Yes No No (1985); and adaptations of the plays The Illusion (1988), by 17th-century French dramatist Pierre Corneille, and The Dybbuk (1994), by Russian writer Shloime Anski. Kushner has also directed plays in theaters throughout the United States.