Tony Kushner

1990 Winner in
Drama

Tony Kushner’s plays include Angels in America, Parts One and Two; A Bright Room Called Day; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’ film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Munich, and West Side Story. Kushner has also written adaptations of Pierre Corneille's The Illusion and S. Ansky's Dybbuk. He wrote the children's book Brundibar, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award and two Oscar nominations, among other honors. In 2008, he was the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.

Reviews & Praise

“ . . . his plays, which are invariably political, are rarely polemical. Instead Mr. Kushner rejects ideology in favor of what he calls 'a dialectically shaped truth,' which must be 'outrageously funny' and 'absolutely agonizing,' and must 'move us forward.' He gives voice to characters who have been rendered powerless by the forces of circumstances—a drag queen dying of AIDS, an uneducated Southern maid, contemporary Afghans—and his attempt to see all sides of their predicament has a sly subversiveness. He forces the audience to identify with the marginalized—a humanizing act of the imagination.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker

“You know you're in the hands of Tony Kushner when the characters are wrestling with big ideas in fraught situations, the laughter is plentiful and you leave feeling smarter than you were before. Such is the case with the West Coast premiere of The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures . . . it's a richly rewarding and stimulating experience.” —Robert Hurwitt, The San Francisco Chronicle

“Kushner, a writer who is always on high alert to humanity as well as history, has, in the Homebody, created a character—an ‘impassioned, fluttery, doomed’ character—who is timeless as well as timely.” —Nancy Franklin, The New Yorker [on Homebody/Kabul]

"Angels in America is the finest drama of our time, speaking to us of an entire era of life and death as no other play within memory. It ranks as nothing less than one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century." —John Heilpern, The New York Observer

Selected Works

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Outside Links
Interview (The Paris Review)
Wrestling with Angels (Documentary)