With a new English libretto by Tony Kushner and a design from the legendary Maurice Sendak, the Czech opera Brundibar is a beautiful children's story extolling the virtues of courage and collective action against tyranny, and was first performed by Jews at a Nazi concentration camp. It is published here with Kushner's short play But the Giraffe, a sensitively drawn historical backdrop.


Tony Kushner’s plays include A Bright Room Called Day, Angels in America, Parts One and Two, Slavs!, Homebody/Kabul, the musical Caroline, or Change and the opera A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, both with composer Jeanine Tesori. He has adapted and translated Pierre Corneille’s The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan and Mother Courage and Her Children and the English-language libretto for the opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of Angels in America, and for Steven Spielberg’s Munich and Lincoln. His books include Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, The Art of Maurice Sendak, 1980 to the Present and Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, among other honors. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.