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Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner is one of the most lauded American playwrights, primarily known for his Pulitzer-Prize-winning magnum opus, Angels in America. His work is informed by his identity as a Jewish man, a homosexual, a leftist, and a deeply thoughtful intellectual.

Born in New York City in 1956 to William, a clarinetist, and Sylvia, a bassoonist, Kushner grew up loving music and literature. The family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana; of his 1960s childhood, Kushner remembered, “Threats of nuclear...

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Tony Kushner Essays

Angels in America

At the first scene of Tony Kushner’s drama Angels in America (1993), Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz's eulogy for Sarah Ironson exposes the play's crucial themes and motifs. The Rabbi, a member of the “Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews” (Millennium, 9),...

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Angels in America

George Santayana’ s oft-quoted aphorism—“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”—has entered cultural ubiquity and become a cliché, paraphrased ad nauseam by politicians and philosophically-inclined college students. Still,...

College

Angels in America

Much of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America centers around the immediate despair and hardships which afflict victims of the AIDs crisis in the 1980s. Beyond that, however, there are certain characters who illustrate conflicts related to issues...