Harvey Fierstein was born June 6, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. He received a fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute in 1973, but even before finishing school he had embarked on a career in theatre. After working as a female impersonator, and while still a teenager, Fierstein earned his first role as an actor in 1971. In Andy Warhol's Pork, Fierstein played an overweight, asthmatic lesbian maid. He began writing his own plays in 1976. International Stud was written as a form of therapy after the end of a two-year romance.

Fierstein later combined the semi-autobiographical Stud with two other one-act plays, Fugue in a Nursery and Widows and Children First, to form Torch Song Trilogy, which debuted Off-Broadway in 1981. Torch Song Trilogy, which Fierstein also starred in, is the play with which he is most closely identified; it is considered his defining work. The play won a number of...