Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner

Plays

• Yes, Yes, NO, No, published in Plays in Process, 1987.

• Stella, produced in New York, NY, 1987.

• A Bright Room Called Day, (produced in San Francisco, CA, 1987).

• Hydriotaphia, produced in New York, NY, 1987.

• The Illusion (adapted from Pierre Corneille's play L'Illusion comique, produced in New York, NY, 1988.

• Widows (with Ariel Dorfman), produced in Los Angeles, CA, 1991.

• Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part One: Millennium Approaches(produced in San Francisco,

 1991),Hern, 1992, Part Two: Perestroika,produced in New York,NY, 1992).

• A Bright Room Called Day, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 1994.

• Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (includes both parts; produced as two-part television film on Home

 Box Office, 2003), Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 1995.

• Henry Box Brown, or the Mirror of Slavery, performed at Royal National Theatre,London, 1998.

Biography

Tony Kushner was born in Manhattan on July 16, 1956, the son of William and Sylvia Kushner, both classically trained musians who encouraged his budding interests in the arts and literature.Kushner spent most of his childhood in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His mother, an amateur actress, performed in local plays, and Kushner became entranced by the emotional power of the theater and the arts in general. Kushner moved to New York in 1974 to begin his undergraduate college education at Columbia University, where he completed a B.A. in English literature in 1978. While in college, he also immersed himself in the New York theater scene. Though aware of his sexual preference from an early age, Kushner attempted to overcome his homosexuality through psychotherapy. He eventually came to terms with his sexual orientation and opened his writing to homosexual themes.Following the completion of his degree at Columbia, Kushner worked as a switchboard operator at the United Nations Plaza Hotel from 1979 to 1985, during which time he also enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Trained as a director under the guidance of Bertolt Brecht specialist Carl Weber, Kushner wrote plays and directed them with his fellow students prior to completing his M.F.A. in directing in 1984. Some of these plays were also staged by the Imaginary Theatre Company at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis where Kushner worked as an assistant director (Wheatley 1).

Awards

Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play,and the New York Drama Critics Award for best play. Kushner won another Tony Award for best play in 1994 for the second part of Angels in Americal, Perestroika.