Growing up white, Jewish, and homosexual in the turbulent South of the '60s does not lay the groundwork for a complacent life. Finding himself a one-man experiment in the limits of tolerance, Kushner has used theater to explore issues of prejudice and community. His plays shed special light on the po

Contemporary plays, Epic, Ethereal, Expansive, Funny, Gay/lesbian theater, Political, Queer, Sprawling

Stephen Sondheim earned his musical stripes alongside the best in the business: his first foray into creating a musical was as lyricist to Leonard Bernstein's composer for "West Side Story" (1957). After a second lyrical outing with Jules Styne's music for "Gypsy" (1959), Sondheim was ready to brave

20th-century music, Bubblicious, Grand, New american musical, Rhythmic, Witty

Playwright, professor, and Performance artist Anna Deveare Smith grounds her avant-garde theater in the infinitely strange world of reality. "I look for the poem that the person is," Smith says of the real-people inspirations for her dramatic characters. Instead of creating intricate backgrounds for

Collage, Huge, Layered, Open-ended, Political, Polychromatic, Sincere, Social protest, Solo performance

Enigmatic, magnetic, elusive, and mysterious -- these words and others like them have been employed over the decades to describe actor/playwright Sam Shepard's cryptic persona and plays. After leaving a dead-end town in the middle of a California wasteland, a young Shepard moved to America's biggest

Dystopic, Melancholy, Off-broadway, Primal, Tense, Visceral