Weissman School of Arts and Sciences

Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner

Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence, Spring 1999

 

 

“The terms of the national debate have subtly, insidiously shifted. What used to be called liberal is now called radical; what used to be called radical is now called insane. What used to be called reactionary is now called moderate, and what used to be called insane is now called solid conservative thinking.”

-American Things

 Tony Kushner, the celebrated American playwright, was the spring 1999 Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College. Mr. Kushner is the author of many plays, including A Bright Room Called Day; Hydriotaphia; Angels in America, Parts One and Two; and Slavs!, as well as adaptations of Corneille’s The Illusion, Ansky’s The Dybbuk, and Goethe’s Stella. Other projects have included two musical plays, St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and It’s An Undoing World, in collaboration with The Klezmatics; an opera libretto, Caroline, or Change, for Bobby McFerrin and the San Francisco Opera; and the play Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery.

Mr. Kushner has received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, two Tony Awards, an Obie Award, and a Whiting Fellowship, among other awards. A collection of his interviews, Tony Kushner in Conversation, was published by University of Michigan Press, and a collection of his essays, Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, is available from TCG Press. He was raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and lives in New York City.

During his March 1999 residency at Baruch, Mr. Kushner discussed the theme of political theatre and presented a College-wide reading from a work-in-progress.

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