Kushner was born in Manhattan, the son of Sylvia (née Deutscher), a bassoonist, and William David Kushner, a clarinetist and conductor.[2][3] His family is Jewish, descended from immigrants from Russia and Poland.[4][5][6][7][8] 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.[9] 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.
In a 2015 interview actress/producer Viola Davis revealed she had hired Kushner to write an as yet untitled biopic about the life of Barbara Jordan that she planned to star in.[17]
In 2016, Kushner worked on a screenplay version of August Wilson's play Fences; the resulting film Fences, directed by Denzel Washington, was released in December 2016.
Kushner is famous for frequent revisions and years-long gestations of his plays. Both Angels in America: Perestroika and Homebody/Kabul were significantly revised even after they were first published. Kushner has admitted that the original script version of Angels in America: Perestroika is nearly double the length of the theatrical version.[18] His newest completed work, the play The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, began as a novel more than a decade before it finally opened on May 15, 2009.
In 2018, it was announced that Kushner was working on a script of a remake of West Side Story for Spielberg to direct.[19]West Side Story was released in December 2021 to positive reviews and received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.[20][21]
In 2022, Kushner collaborated again with Spielberg on The Fabelmans, a fictionalized account of Spielberg's childhood. The film premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival to widespread critical acclaim and won the festival's People's Choice Award.[22]The Fabelmans received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.
In 2023, with his Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theater Album for Caroline, or Change, Kushner became one of the few writers in history nominated for all four major American entertainment awards: the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards.
Kushner's six-word memoir was "At least I never voted Republican."[23][24] His criticism of the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians and the increased religious extremism in Israeli politics and culture has created some controversy with American Jews,[25] including some opposition to his receiving an honorary doctorate at the 2006 commencement of Brandeis University. During the controversy, quotes critical of Zionism and Israel made by Kushner were circulated. Kushner said at the time that his quotes were "grossly mischaracterized". Kushner told the Jewish Advocate in an interview, "All that anybody seems to be reading is a couple of right-wing Web sites taking things deliberately out of context and excluding anything that would complicate the picture by making me seem like a reasonable person, which I basically think I am."[26]
In an interview with the Jewish Independent, Kushner commented, "I want the state of Israel to continue to exist. I've always said that. I've never said anything else. My positions have been lied about and misrepresented in so many ways. People claim that I'm for a one-state solution, which is not true." He later stated that he hopes that "there might be a merging of the two countries because [they're] geographically kind of ridiculous looking on a map", although he acknowledged that political realities make this unlikely in the near future.[27] Kushner has received backlash from family members due to his political views of Israel.[28]
On May 2, 2011, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY),[29] at their monthly public meeting, voted to remove (by tabling to avoid debate) Kushner's name from the list of people invited to receive honorary degrees, based on a statement by trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld about Kushner's purported statements and beliefs about Zionism and Israel.[30][31] In response, the CUNY Graduate Center Advocate began a live blog on the "Kushner Crisis" situation, including news coverage and statements of support from faculty and academics.[32] Three days later, CUNY issued a public statement that the Board is independent.[33]
On May 6, three previous honorees stated they intended to return their degrees: Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Cunningham, and Ellen Schrecker.[11] Wiesenfeld said that if Kushner would renounce his anti-Israel statements in front of the Board, he would be willing to vote for him.[34] The same day, the Board moved to reverse its decision.[35] Kushner accepted the honorary doctorate at the June 3 graduation for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.[36]
Kushner and his partner, Mark Harris, held a commitment ceremony in April 2003,[38] the first same-sex commitment ceremony to be featured in the Vows column of The New York Times.[39] In summer 2008, Kushner and Harris were legally married at the town hall in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[40]
Harris is an editor of Entertainment Weekly and author of Pictures at a Revolution – Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, and Mike Nichols: A Life.
He is close friends with theatre director Michael Mayer, whom he met while studying at NYU.[41]
List of works
Plays
"Incidents and Occurrences During the Travels of the Tailor Max" Lake Charles, Louisiana, Governor's Program For Gifted Children, 1980.
The Age of Assassins, New York, Newfoundland Theatre, 1982.
La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse, New York, Ohio Theatre, 1983.
The Heavenly Theatre, produced at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, 1984.
The Umbrella Oracle, Martha's Vineyard, The Yard, Inc..
Last Gasp at the Cataract, Martha's Vineyard, The Yard, Inc., 1984.
Yes, Yes, No, No: The Solace-of-Solstice, Apogee/Perigee, Bestial/Celestial Holiday Show, produced in St. Louis, Imaginary Theatre Company, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, 1985, published in Plays in Process, 1987.
Reverse Transcription: Six Playwrights Bury a Seventh, A Ten-Minute Play That's Nearly Twenty Minutes Long, Louisville, Humana Festival of New American Plays, Actors Theatre of Louisville, March 1996.
A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds (adapted from Joachim Neugroschel's translation of the original Yiddish play by S. Ansky; produced in New York City at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, 1997), Theatre Communications Group, 1997.
The Good Person of Szechuan (adapted from the original play by Bertolt Brecht), Arcade, 1997.
(With Eric Bogosian and others) Love's Fire: Seven New Plays Inspired by Seven Shakespearean Sonnets, Morrow, 1998.
Terminating, or Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein, or Ambivalence, in Love's Fire, Minneapolis, Guthrie Theater Lab, January 7, 1998; New York: Joseph Papp Public Theater, June 19, 1998.
A Meditation from Angels in America (1994) Harper, San Francisco, ISBN0-06-251224-2
Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness: Essays, a Play, Two Poems, and a Prayer (1995) Theatre Communications Group, New York, NY ISBN1-55936-100-X
"Three Screeds from Key West: For Larry Kramer", (1997) in We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer, edited by Lawrence D. Mass, St. Martin's Press, New York, pp.191–199. ISBN0-312-22084-7
Moises Kaufman (1997) Gross Indecency, afterword by Kushner, Vintage, New York, pp.135–143. ISBN0-8222-1649-3
Plays by Tony Kushner (New York: Broadway Play Publishing, 1999), ISBN0-88145-102-9. Includes:
A Bright Room called Day (First published 1994)
The Illusion, freely adapted from Pierre Corneille's L'Illusion comique
Death & Taxes: Hydrotaphia, and Other Plays, (1998) Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), ISBN1-55936-156-5. Includes:
Reverse transcription
Hydriotaphia: or the Death of Dr. Browne, (adaptation of Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, a fictitious, imaginary account of Sir Thomas Browne's character not based upon fact)
La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse, (opera) – 1983
St. Cecilia or The Power of Music, (opera libretto based on Heinrich von Kleist's eighteenth-century story Die heilige Cäcilie oder Die Gewalt der Musik, Eine Legende)
Brundibar, (an opera in collaboration with Maurice Sendak)
Director
Helen, written by Ellen McLaughlin, produced at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, 2002.[44]
Interviews
Gerard Raymond, "Q & A With Tony Kushner," Theatre Week (December 20–26, 1993): 14–20.
Mark Marvel, "A Conversation with Tony Kushner," Interview, 24 (February 1994): 84.
David Savran, "Tony Kushner," in Speaking on Stage: Interviews with Contemporary American Playwrights, edited by Philip C. Kolin and Colby H. Kullman (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996), pp.291–313.
Robert Vorlicky, ed., Tony Kushner in Conversation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
Victor Wishna, "Tony Kushner," in In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights, Photographs by Ken Collins, Interviews by Victor Wishna (New York: Umbrage Editions, 2006).
Jesse Tisch, "The Perfectionist: An Interview with Tony Kushner," Secular Culture & Ideas Archived September 24, 2020, at the Wayback Machine 2009.
Christopher Carbone, Q & A With Tony Kushner, L Style G Style, (May/June 2011):
Michał Hernes, "Kushner: Polityczna dusza Amerykanów została okaleczona" in Polityczna dusza Amerykanów została okaleczona, May 17, 2012.
Anderson, Virginia (2022) "Tony Kushner" in Noriega and Schildcrout (eds.) 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, pp. 118–122. Routledge. ISBN 978-1032067964.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit), Volume 81, 1994.
Bloom, Harold, ed., Tony Kushner, New York, Chelsea House, 2005.
Brask, Anne, ed., "Ride on the Moon", Chicago, Randomhouse, 1990.
Brask, Per K., ed., Essays on Kushner's Angels, Winnipeg, Blizzard Publishing, 1995.
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