Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner (born July 16, 1956, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American dramatist who became one of the most highly acclaimed playwrights of his generation after the debut of his two-part play Angels in America (1990, 1991).

Kushner grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and attended Columbia University and New York University. His early plays include La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse (1983), A Bright Room Called Day (1985), Yes, Yes, No, No (1985), and Stella (1987). His major work, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, consists of two lengthy plays that deal with political issues and the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s while meditating on change and loss—two prominent themes throughout Kushner’s oeuvre. The first part, Millennium Approaches (1990), won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for best play; the second, Perestroika (1991), also won a Tony Award for best play. Angels in America proved to be extremely popular for a work of its imposing length (the two parts run seven hours in total), and it was adapted for an Emmy Award-winning television film that aired in 2003.

Kushner’s subsequent plays include Slavs! (1994); A Dybbuk; or, Between Two Worlds (1995), an adaptation of S. Ansky’s Yiddish classic Der Dibek; Henry Box Brown; or, The Mirror of Slavery (1998); and Homebody/Kabul (1999), which addresses the relationship between Afghanistan and the West. He also wrote the book for the musical Caroline, or Change (1999). His unfinished Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, written in response to the Iraq War, was performed in a number of readings in 2004, and his translation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children was staged in New York City in 2006. Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (2009) is a naturalistic drama about an extended family of intellectuals dealing with their patriarch’s desire to die by suicide.

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In addition to his work for the stage, Kushner contributed screenplays to Steven Spielberg’s films Munich (2005; cowritten with Eric Roth), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022; cowritten with Spielberg), all of which earned Kushner Academy Award nominations. He also wrote the script for Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story (2021). In addition, Kushner authored the children’s book Brundibar (2003; illustrated by Maurice Sendak) and coedited (with Alisa Solomon) the essay collection Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003). He received the National Medal of Arts in 2013.