Tony KushnerBirth Place: New York, New York, USA Date of Birth: July 16, 1956 Heritage: American Contact Tony Kushner | 
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Writer of Angels in America Background: American playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner is best known for penning “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” (a play in two parts: “Millennium Approaches” and “Perestroika”), which won him Tony Awards for Best Play consecutively in 1993 and 1993, with the first part “Millennium Approaches” also nabbing the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. “Angels in America” was adapted into a television miniseries in 2003 for which Kushner wrote the screenplay. He won an Emmy Award, a teleplay won an Emmy Award, a Writers Guild of America Award and the Humanitas Prize for his teleplay. He is also recognized for co-writing the screenplay for the 2005 Steven Spielberg movie “Munich,” from which he was nominated for both an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award. His other acclaimed plays include “ A Bright Room Called Day,” “Caroline, or Change” and “Homebody/Kabul.” Kushner was honored with the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award in 2008. He also was awarded the 2010 Golden Apple Award by Casting Society of America. Currently, Kushner is married to his long time boyfriend, Mark Harris. In 2008, he received a Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from SUNY Purchase College. In May 20011, he also received an honorary doctorate in from CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Childhood and Family: Son of Jewish clarinetist and conductor William Kushner and bassoonist Sylvia Deutscher, Anthony Robert Kushner, who would later be popular as Tony Kushner, was born on July 16, 1956, in New York City, New York. Shortly after his birth, his family relocated to Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he spent his whole childhood until college. In high school, Tony was active in policy debate and once made it to the final rounds. In 1974, he moved to New York City to start his undergraduate college education at Columbia University, from which he later earned a BA in Medieval Studies in 1978. He continued to study directing at New York University's Graduate School. While in graduate school, he spent the summers of 1978 to 1981 directing both early original works and plays by Shakespeare for the children attending the Governor's Program for Gifted Children (GPGC) in Lake Charles. In April 2003, Tony and his life partner, Mark Harris, an editor of Entertainment Weekly and author of Pictures at a Revolution – Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, held a commitment ceremony, making them the first gay couple to be featured in the Vows column of the New York Times. They were legally married at the city hall in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 2008.
Career: Tony Kushner, who worked as a switchboard operator at the United Nations Plaza Hotel in 1979, wrote a string of plays during the 1980s, including “The Age of Assassins” (1982), “La Fin de la Baleine: An Opera for the Apocalypse” ( 1983), “The Heavenly Theatre” (1984), “The Umbrella Oracle” and “Last Gasp at the Cataract” (1984). As a playwright, however, he did not have a first professional production until 1985 with “Yes Yes No No: The Solace-of-Solstice, Apogee/Perigee, Bestial/Celestial Holiday Show” at the Imaginary Theatre Company in St. Louis. His next play, “In Great Eliza's Golden Time,” produced at St. Louis's Imaginary Theatre Company in 1986. In 1987, Kushner adapted “Stella,” from the play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethes, and it was produced in New York City. The play “ A Bright Room Called Day,” which was based on Bertolt Brecht's 1938 work “The Private Life of the Master Race,” premiered at theEureka Theatre in San Francisco, California in October 1987 and was directed by Oskar Eustis. The play later produced at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in 1991 by the New York Shakespeare Festival, where it was directed by Michael Greif. Still in 1987, Kushner wrote “Hydriotaphia,” which was based on the the life on Sir Thomas Browne, but the play remained unstaged until 1998 when it was co-produced by the Alley Theatre in Texas and the Berkeley Repertory Company in California. Kushner next adapted “The Illusion,” from Pierre Corneille's play “L'illusion comique,” which was produced in NYC in 1988, with a revised version produced at Hartford Stage in 1990. Kushner's play, “In That Day (Lives of the Prophets)” produced at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1989. Kushner kept on working tirelessly throughout the 1990s. In 1991, he collaborated with Ariel Dorfman on adapting Dorfman's play, “ Widows,” for American audiences. It was produced in Los Angeles. His big breakthrough arrived with “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” The first part “ Millennium Approaches,” which he developed with the Mark Tapper Forum, had its world premier in May 1991 in a production performed by the Eureka Theatre Company of San Francisco, directed by David Esbjornson. It opened in London at a Royal National Theatre production at the Cottesloe Theatre in January 1992 and would ran for a year. The second part, “Perestroika,” received its world premiere in November 1992 in a production by the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone. It received its London debut at the Royal National Theatre a year later on November 20, 1993. The play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” (aired in two parts) debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993, with George C. Wolfe as director. Both “Millennium Approaches” and “Perestroika” won the Tony Awards for Best Play back to back in 1993 and 1994, respectively. Both parts also won consecutive Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Play. “Millennium Approaches” also won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 1994, Kushner adapted Bertolt Brecht's “Good Person of Setzuan” from Wendy Arons translation. The play was produced in New York City at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in 1997 and at Theatre Communications Group, the same year. He also penned “Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness” for the New York Theatre Workshop, “The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds,” which was adapted from Joachim Neugroschel's translation of the original Yiddish play by S. Ansky, “Reverse Transcription: Six Playwrights Bury a Seventh, A Ten-Minute Play That's Nearly Twenty Minutes Long,” “Terminating, or Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein, or Ambivalence, in Love's Fire,” and “Henry Box Brown, or the Mirror of Slavery,” which was performed London's National Theatre in 1998. In the late 1990s, Kushner was asked by actress Kika Markham to make a monologue for her, which would become “Homebody.” “Homebody/Kabul” first performed at New York Theatre Workshop in December 2001. Kushner's musical, “Caroline, or Change,” opened at the Public Theater in November 2003. It was transferred to Broadway the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on May 2, 2004 and closed on August 29, 2004 after 136 performances and 22 previews. The play brought him two Tony nominations for Best Book of a Musical and as Best Score (Music and/or Lyrics), sharing the latter category with Jeanine Tesori, a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and an Obie award for Special Citations. “Caroline, or Change” debuted in London at the National Theatre on the Lyttelton stage in October 2006. The play later also won a 2007 Laurence Olivier for Best New Musical and the 2009 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Production of a Musical in a Large Venue. 2003 also found Kushner writing the television miniseries adaptation of “Angels in America” for HBO. Directed by Mike Nicholsand starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Patrick Wilson, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright and Justin Kirk, the show aired from December 7 to 14, 2003 and amassed a number of awards and nominations, including, for Kushner, an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special, the Humanitas Prize for 90 Minute or Longer Category and a Writers Guild of America Award for Long Form – Adapted. In 2005, Kushner made his big screen writing debut in “Munich,” a historical fiction movie about the Israeli government's secret revenge attacks after the massacre of Israeli athletes by the Black September terrorist group during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Eric Bana, the film earned positive reviews and was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn) and Best Original Score (John Williams) and Best Adapted Screenplay, which Kushner shared with partner Eric Roth. Kushner also received a Golde Globe nomination, a Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award, an Online Film Critics Society nomination and a Washington DC Area Film Critics Association nomination for his writing efforts. In 2006, Kushner wrote a new translation of Bertolt Brecht's “Mother Courage and Her Children.” It performed at the Delacorte Theater and starred Meryl Streep. The same year, he became a subject of Freida Lee Mock's documentary feature, “Wrestling With Angels,” which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2009, Kushner wrote “The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Kushner wrote the screenplay of “Lincoln,” an upcoming biographical drama movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. The film is set to be released in the US in December 2012. In addition to play and screen work, Kushner has also written a number of books and essays.
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