The Impact of Tony Kushner on Queer Culture

"Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both" ("Tony Kushner: a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright" 1).

From the very beginning of his career, Tony Kushner has made an impact on the queer community. His political and AIDS directed activism have helped to break the silence surrounding AIDS and homosexuality. His work is the channel through which he delivers his messages, messages which appear to be very highly respected. Angels in America won a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the Evening Standard Award, two Olivier Award Nominations, the New York Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, and the LAMBDA Literary Award for Drama. In 1998, the play was chosen by London's National Theatre as one of the ten best plays of the twentieth century ("The A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library Center Presents Tony Kushner" 1). Kushner has also won multiple awards for his many other plays.

The adaptation of Angels in America into an HBO miniseries has also had a large impact on the queer community. Not only has the miniseries been able to touch a large group of people, thus allowing Kushner to share his message nationwide, but it has had an impact on regular cable television as well. Angels in America has been compared to shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and has helped to establish a new category of "gay TV." According to Kushner in an interview with Ben Greenman of MotherJones, "Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction" ("Tony Kushner: Radical Pragmatist 2).

Kushner also has had a large impact on the American theater. In an interview with Oskar Eustis, Eustis says:

One of, I think, the astonishing things about your career is that your career has flourished ...because you've been true to the principles. It was wrong to do a two-evening play, when nobody knew who you were, about gay men. It was the wrong thing to do career-wise and any-other-wise, except that it was the thing that had to be done to tell the truth that you knew, to not worry about what was popular, but to tell the truth. That's, for me, the most inspiring example of what an artist is supposed to do that I know. And all of us in the American theatre are lucky to have you among us. ("Tony Kushner" TCG National Conference 11)

Angles in America has taken American theater by storm. It has been performed in major cities all over the nation and is now become a part of theater departments on many college campuses. Despite much protesting from the college administration, parents of students, and citizens of the college communities, the play is still being performed and often attracts very large audiences. Angels in America, as well as many other plays, has provided a channel through which gay communities from college campuses to big cities to small rural towns can connect (McCabe 2).

Kushner has not only impacted people in our nation, he has influenced people throughout the world. His contributions to the AIDS community through ACT UP have helped to break the silence surrounding AIDS, a disease from which people in every city, state, and country are dying of every day. His political activism has helped to impart the ideas and hopes of his political party to many citizens. And most importantly, Kushner's willingness to show his openly gay lifestyle and his affirmation of his gay identity is a model for not only gay people, but for all of us. Each of us should follow in his footsteps by fighting for what we believe in and always being true to ourselves.