Seven Guitars

August Wilson was the most iconic African American playwright of the late-twentieth century, most known for the Century Cycle, a series of ten plays set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. Of these, Fences earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1987, and another Pulitzer Prize in 1990, for The Piano Lesson. In 1996, Seven Guitars premiered on the Broadway stage, followed by King Hedley II in 2001 and Gem of the Ocean in 2004.

Tony Kushner's plays include Angels in America, A Bright Room Called Day, Slavs!, Homebody/Kabul, and the musical Caroline, or Change with composer Jeanine Tesori. He has adapted Corneille’s The Illusion, Ansky’s The Dybbuk, and Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan and Mother Courage and Her Children. He wrote the screenplay for Mike Nichols’s film of Angels in America, and the screenplays for Steven Spielberg’s Munich, Lincoln, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans. His books include Wrestling with Zion, co-edited with Alisa Solomon; Brundibar, illustrated by Maurice Sendak; and The Art of Maurice Sendak, 1980 to the Present. Kushner was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.