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The civil rights movement was a social movement in the United States from 1954 to 1968 that aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which most commonly affected African Americans. Growing up in Louisiana during the Civil Rights era exposed him to issues of social justice and gave him a unique perspective on American society.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement
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Kushner was born to a bassoonist mother and a clarinetist/conductor father. His family's artistic background encouraged his own creative pursuits and love for the arts. -
Tony Kushner was born in New York, NY, United States, and is the Son of William David Kushner and Sylvia Kushner(Deutscher). -
Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Lake Charles, where he was raised and spent his childhood. The city and his experiences growing up there influenced his work, notably the musical Caroline, or Change. -
Mark Harris (born November 25, 1963, in New York City is an American journalist and author. He began his career at Entertainment Weekly as a columnist and eventually became the magazine's executive editor. His writing has also appeared in Slate and New York magazine.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Harris_(journalist) -
Kushner attended Columbia University and received his bachelor's degree in medieval literature. After completing his undergraduate degree, he attended New York University, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts in directing. -
Tony Kushner has been creating plays for at least 40 years, as his career began in the early 1980s with his first published play, The Age of Assassins, in 1982. His work continues to be produced, with one of his most recent completed plays being The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, which premiered in 2009.
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The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS began in 1981 and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue.The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s was a major source of inspiration, particularly for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America, which was written during a time of immense grief and political frustration for the gay community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_HIV/AIDS -
A Bright Room Called Day is a 1980s play by Tony Kushner about the collapse of democracy in the Weimar Republic in 1930s Germany and its parallels to the Reagan era in the United States. The play contrasts the experiences of a group of artists in Berlin facing the rise of Hitler with a young American woman in the 1980s who sees worrying similarities to the political climate of her own time. -
Angels in America is a two-part play by Tony Kushner that explores the AIDS crisis and gay life in the 1980s through intersecting characters in New York City, blending realism with fantasy. -
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. Tony Kushner won one for his play Angels in America. -
Kushner has received various accolades, including two Tony Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, along with nominations for four Academy Awards and a Grammy Award. He has also received various honors, including: 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama – Angels in America: Millennium Approaches -
Caroline, or Change is a musical by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori about an African-American maid named Caroline in 1963 Louisiana who works for a Jewish family during the era of the Civil Rights Movement. The show explores themes of social and political change, family dynamics, and how even small acts of defiance or compliance can have a significant impact. -
Homebody/Kabul is a play by Tony Kushner about an English housewife who becomes obsessed with Afghanistan after reading an old guidebook and disappears there. Her husband and daughter travel to Kabul to find her, where they encounter the country's complex history and culture while grappling with their own dysfunctional family dynamic -
Tony Kushner received an Obie Award for Special Citations in 2004 for his work on the musical Caroline, or Change. He shared this specific citation with the composer Jeanine Tesori.
The Obie Awards are presented annually to off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theater artists and productions, and the Special Citations recognize outstanding or unique contributions to the season's theater landscape. -
“Imagination can't create anything new, can it? ...
“We have reached a verdict your honor. ...
“I think we ought to pray. ...
“I don't understand why I'm not dead. ...
“He was a terrible person. ...
“I never imagined losing my mind was going to be such hard work.” -
Tony Kushner is married to author and editor Mark Harris. They had a commitment ceremony in 2003 and were legally married in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 2008. -
Kushner had the easiest time connecting to Tennessee when he was young and started to think about being a playwright. When he read A Streetcar Named Desire for the first time, he fell in love with Tennessee because he was a southern writer, and he also had grown up in Louisiana. Williams, much more than any other American playwright, succeeded in finding a poetic diction for the stage, and Kushner immediately identified with that ambition. -
Tony Kushner received the Paul Selvin Award for his screenplay for Lincoln because the film's script "best embodies the spirit of constitutional and civil rights and liberties". The award, given by the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), recognizes scripts that uphold these principles, which are essential for free writers. -
west side story is about Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy. and is one of tony's sreenplays