SOURCE: Fisher, James. “Introduction: The Feathers and the Mirrors and the Smoke.” In The Theater of Tony Kushner: Living Past Hope, pp. 1-20. New York: Routledge, 2002.

In the following essay, Fisher explains the significance of Kushner's work to American theater of the late twentieth century and turn of the millennium.

Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and challenge the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.

—Ernst Fischer (14)

Tony Kushner's sudden and conspicuous arrival on the international stage in the early 1990s was as surprising and jolting as the abrupt celestial appearance at the end of Millennium Approaches, the first of Kushner's two Angels in America plays. Together, these plays comprise a theatrical epic that critics compared favorably to the greatest plays of the twentieth century. In an era of increasing devaluation of the arts...