TONY KUSHNER Biography - Writers

 
 

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TONY KUSHNER

Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Kushner is               
best known for his two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National               
Themes. His other plays include A Bright Room Called Day, Slavs!; Hydrotaphia;Homebody/Kabul; 
and Caroline or Change, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with                   
music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted 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 children?s opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa. He wrote the                       
screenplays for Mike Nichols? film of Angels In America, and Steven Spielberg?s               
Munich. His books include But the Giraffe, a Curtain Raising, and Brundibar: the               
Libretto, 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 for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony               
Awards, three Obie Awards, an Oscar nomination, an Arts Award from the American               
Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Award for a Mid-Career                         
Playwright, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and                   
Defenders, and a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for                   
Jewish Culture, among many others. Most recently, Caroline or Change, produced                 
in the autumn of 2006 at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, received                 
the Evening Standard Award, the London Drama Critics? Circle Award and the                     
Olivier Award for Best Musical. He is the subject of a documentary film,                       
Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning                     
filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He is working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln.               
He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.