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Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Among his stage work, he is most known for Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few writers in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
Kushner made his Broadway debut in 1993 with both Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. His 2003 television adaptation of the play earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie.
In 2003, Kushner wrote the lyrics and book to the musical Caroline, or Change which earned him Tony Award nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. The 2021 Broadway revival of Caroline, or Change earned Kushner a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
He has collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on the films Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), West Side Story (2021), and The Fabelmans (2022). His work with Spielberg has earned him four Academy Award nominations, one for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, and one for Best Original Screenplay.
Kushner was born in Manhattan, the son of Sylvia (née Deutscher), a bassoonist, and William David Kushner, a clarinetist and conductor. His family is Jewish, descended from immigrants from Russia and Poland. Shortly after his birth, Kushner's parents moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, the seat of Calcasieu Parish where he spent his childhood. During high school Kushner was active in policy debate. He first developed an interest in the figure of Roy Cohn—who features as a major character in his play Angels in America—when he was ten years old, after asking his father about the meaning of McCarthyism, to which his father responded by giving his son a copy of Fred J. Cook’s The Nightmare Decade.Video on YouTube
In 1974, Kushner moved back to New York to begin his undergraduate college education at Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Medieval studies in 1978. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, graduating in 1984. During graduate school, he spent the summers of 1978–1981 directing both early original works (Masque of the Owls and Incidents and Occurrences During the Travels of the Tailor Max) and plays by Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest) starring the children attending the Governor's Program for Gifted Children (GPGC) in Lake Charles.
Kushner has received several honorary degrees: in 2003 from Columbia College Chicago, in 2006 an honorary doctorate from Brandeis University, in 2008 an honorary Doctor of Letters from SUNY Purchase College, in May 2011 an honorary doctorate from CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and also an Honorary Doctorate from The New School, and in May 2015, an honorary Doctor of Letters from Ithaca College.
As a student at NYU, Kushner cofounded the theatre company 3P Productions (short for "Politics, Poetry, and Popcorn") for which he wrote and directed plays such as the dance-theatre piece La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse. In 1985, he received a yearlong National Endowment for the Arts directing fellowship at the St. Louis Repertory Theater. His first commercially produced play was A Bright Room Called Day, which premiered at San Francisco's Eureka Theatre Company in 1987. The company subsequently commissioned a play from Kushner, which along with a $50,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant, spawned Kushner's best known work, Angels in America. A play in two parts (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika), Angels in America is a seven-hour epic about the AIDS epidemic in Reagan-era New York. It had its world premiere at the Eureka Theatre in 1991, followed by productions at the Royal National Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway. Millennium Approaches won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and both parts of the play won consecutive Tony Awards for Best Play in 1993 and 1994.
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Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Among his stage work, he is most known for Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few writers in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
Kushner made his Broadway debut in 1993 with both Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. His 2003 television adaptation of the play earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie.
In 2003, Kushner wrote the lyrics and book to the musical Caroline, or Change which earned him Tony Award nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. The 2021 Broadway revival of Caroline, or Change earned Kushner a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
He has collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on the films Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), West Side Story (2021), and The Fabelmans (2022). His work with Spielberg has earned him four Academy Award nominations, one for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, and one for Best Original Screenplay.
Kushner was born in Manhattan, the son of Sylvia (née Deutscher), a bassoonist, and William David Kushner, a clarinetist and conductor. His family is Jewish, descended from immigrants from Russia and Poland. Shortly after his birth, Kushner's parents moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, the seat of Calcasieu Parish where he spent his childhood. During high school Kushner was active in policy debate. He first developed an interest in the figure of Roy Cohn—who features as a major character in his play Angels in America—when he was ten years old, after asking his father about the meaning of McCarthyism, to which his father responded by giving his son a copy of Fred J. Cook’s The Nightmare Decade.Video on YouTube
In 1974, Kushner moved back to New York to begin his undergraduate college education at Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Medieval studies in 1978. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, graduating in 1984. During graduate school, he spent the summers of 1978–1981 directing both early original works (Masque of the Owls and Incidents and Occurrences During the Travels of the Tailor Max) and plays by Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest) starring the children attending the Governor's Program for Gifted Children (GPGC) in Lake Charles.
Kushner has received several honorary degrees: in 2003 from Columbia College Chicago, in 2006 an honorary doctorate from Brandeis University, in 2008 an honorary Doctor of Letters from SUNY Purchase College, in May 2011 an honorary doctorate from CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice and also an Honorary Doctorate from The New School, and in May 2015, an honorary Doctor of Letters from Ithaca College.
As a student at NYU, Kushner cofounded the theatre company 3P Productions (short for "Politics, Poetry, and Popcorn") for which he wrote and directed plays such as the dance-theatre piece La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse. In 1985, he received a yearlong National Endowment for the Arts directing fellowship at the St. Louis Repertory Theater. His first commercially produced play was A Bright Room Called Day, which premiered at San Francisco's Eureka Theatre Company in 1987. The company subsequently commissioned a play from Kushner, which along with a $50,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant, spawned Kushner's best known work, Angels in America. A play in two parts (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika), Angels in America is a seven-hour epic about the AIDS epidemic in Reagan-era New York. It had its world premiere at the Eureka Theatre in 1991, followed by productions at the Royal National Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway. Millennium Approaches won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and both parts of the play won consecutive Tony Awards for Best Play in 1993 and 1994.
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