Tony Kushner born 16 July 1956Tony Kushner is an award-winning American playwright most famous for his play Angels in America,which is one of the most powerful pieces of American theatre inspired by the AIDS epidemic, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
He is also co-author of, along with Eric Roth, the screenplay of the 2005 film Munich, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and earned Kushner (along with Roth) an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
He was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, but his parents, both classically trained musicians, moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana shortly after his birth. Kushner moved to New York in 1974 to begin his undergraduate college education at Columbia University, where he completed a BA in English literature in 1978. He studied directing at New York University's Graduate School, from which he was graduated in 1984.
Angels in America is a play in two parts. The first part is entitled Millennium Approaches, and the second is entitled Perestroika. His other plays include Hydrotaphia, Slavs!: Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, A Bright Room Called Day, Homebody/Kabul, and the book for the musical Caroline, or Change. His new translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children was performed at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 2006 starring Meryl Streep. He has also adapted S Ansky's play The Dybbuk.
In April 2003 he and his long-time partner, Entertainment Weekly editor Mark Harris, had a wedding ceremony in New York. Theirs was the first same-sex marriage ever covered by The New York Times's 'Vows' column.
Due to the phenomenal theatrical and critical success of Angels In America, Kushner has become a celebrity spokeman for gay politics and AIDS activism.