Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner earned a bachelors degree from Columbia University and later did postgraduate work at New York University. In the early 1980s, he founded a theater group and began writing and producing plays. In the early 1990s, he scored a monster hit with the epic, seven-hour, two-part, Broadway blockbuster "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" which earned Kushner 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 Liberty Award for Drama.

Kushner has also written A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!, as well as several adaptations including Goethe's Stella, Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan, Corneille's The Illusion, and S. Ansky's The Dybbuk. His work has been produced at the Mark Taper Forum, the New York Shakespeare Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, Hartford Stage Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Los Angeles Theatre Center as well as theatres in over 30 countries across the globe. He is the recipient of a 1990 Whiting Foundation Writers Award and playwriting and directing fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Kushner is currently an adjunct faculty member of New York University's Dramatic Writing program.

Freida Lee Mock is an Academy Award®-winning filmmaker, a director, producer, and writer whose award-winning films include “Sing!” about a Los Angeles community-based children’s chorus; "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision" (Academy Award Winner, Best Feature Documentary Film, 1995; Directors Guild of America Award nominee 1995); “Never Give Up: The 20th Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper” (Academy Award® Nominee, Best Documentary Short Film, l996); “Return with Honor”; "Rose Kennedy: A Life To Remember,” and “Bird by Bird with Annie,” a portrait of the best-selling author and humorist Anne Lamott.