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Born
He was born in Manhattan, New York to William Kushner and Sylvia Deutscher(classical musicions). He is Jewish and he is a decedent immigrant from Russia and Poland. He will later become a well known writer that wrote a total of 45 plays. Link -
Moving
After he was born, he moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana. He once said in a Vogue interview, "I remember being unhappy a lot." "A good childhood for a playwright. I've known I was different since I was five, and that I was gay since I was nine or ten and dreamed about cross-dressing. I wanted to be Mary Poppins, and I had terrible dreams of being found out and beaten up."
Link -
College life
Tony goes to Columbia University to start his undergraduate years. -
Graduates
He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Medieval Studies -
Protest
He was involved in a protest during his graduation ceremony in 1978. He is one of many students and alumni protesting the university's investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Photo was taken by Timothy Horrigan
photo and information :https://www.wikicu.com/Tony_Kushner -
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Work during School
During graduate school, he spent the summers directing both his original work(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. -
Sexuality
He came out as gay on a pay phone call to his mother. This phone call will give him the freedom to express his whole self and incorporate his sexuality in further plays. -
Opera
"La Fin de la Baleine" was an Opera as well as a play that he did earlier in his career
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tony-Kushner -
More school
He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in New York -
"A Bright Room Called Day"
A play about a series of postcards dispatched not just from the edge of an abyss, but throughout the long, terrifying plunge into the void below. -
Angels in America
A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
It was two parts
The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Unlike other plays, this play was put into 2 parts making it a 7.5 hours long.
-Millennium Approaches
-Perestroika -
Angels of America #2
Angels in America was commissioned by the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco, by co-artistic directors Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone. It was first performed in Los Angeles as a workshop in May 1990 by the Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum. Link -
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Lambda Literary Award for Drama
Tony was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for Drama
and won both years he was nominatied.
-Angels in America
-Slavs -
What he believed in
Tony is a member of ACTUP which is a group that fights against Aids.
Tony lived through the AIDS crisis and experienced the rise of social conservatism during the Reagan era in New York, and this served as inspiration for many of his plays. -
Caroline or Change
Caroline, or Change is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics and book by Tony Kushner. The score combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music. The show ran both Off-Broadway and on Broadway as well as in London.
https://www.mtishows.com/caroline-or-change
photo:https://www.mtishows.com/sites/default/files/styles/hero_responsive_wide/public/show/logo/000272_hero.jpg?itok=zxTFioSe -
Visit back to the past
Tony is asked to go back to Coumbia Univisity and speak to the class of 2004.
He ended his speech by saying, "The world is hungry for you, the world has waited for you, the world has a place for you. Take it. Change the world." Photo: Barroso, Eileen https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/jul04/images/cover_kushner2.jpg information: https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/jul04/cover.html -
Films
In the early 2000's, he started to get into film writing and actually sent one of his plays to director Steven Spielberg in 2005. The play was Wrestling with angels and it was made into a documentary featuring himself.
photo:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493081/ -
Marriage
Tony got married to Mark Harris and was legally married at the town hall in Province, Massachusetts They met when they were both studying at NYU -
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures
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.The title was inspired by George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/theater-biographies/tony-kushner -
Lincoln
Tony wrote the screenplay for the Lincoln movie and was given two nominations for it.
-New York film academy critics Circle award for best screenplay and Paul Selvin Award
Steven Spielberg(director) spent 12 years researching the film. Day Lewis won his third best actor Oscar in 2013 for playing the 16th president in “Lincoln.” His win made him the first man to be awarded three best actor Oscars in the history of the Academy Awards. -
Award
Past president Barack Obama awarded The national medal of arts -
West side story
The play he wrote was then made into a movie. Steven Spielberg actually came to him in 2017 to remake the movie from 1957. Tony actually made a couple of changes to the musical by adding more Spanish to go deeper into the characters Puerto Rican roots. information:https://www.indiewire.com/2022/01/tony-kushner-west-side-story-steven-spielberg-1234689568/
https://m.media- photo:amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDU1YjI2NzUtZWIxMC00NDVkLWFkZjgtMjkzYzNkN2Q0MzM4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODIyOTEyMzY@._V1_.jpg -
West Side story #2
It was also based off another well known play writing by Shakespeare. This just comes to show how much influence Shakespeare has to our current point in time. -
My thoughts
