Tony Kushner

Les Brookes (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Aleks Sierz, Independent Scholar - Europe
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 16 Jul 1956
Activity 1976-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist

Resources

Kushner's Works

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An important clue to the work of Tony Kushner can be found in the title of his best-known play,

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

. Here, the provocative conjunction of the words gay and national suggests an attempt to bring together sub-cultural concerns and wider political issues, indeed to see those wider issues from a gay perspective. It thus highlights Kushner's preoccupation with marginalised communities and their relationship to mainstream society. But it reminds us, too, that we cannot fully understand Kushner's play (or his work as a whole) if we ignore his socialist politics. The tendency to think of Kushner as solely a gay dramatist is misleading: it would be more accurate to describe him as a political dramatist who happens to be gay. His socialism is not…

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2944 words

Citation: Brookes, Les. "Tony Kushner". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5776, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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