Harvey Fierstein
Image by courtesy of harvey firestein
It’s been another banner year for the multi-Tony Award-winning writer and performer Harvey Fierstein, the son of a Conservative Jewish family who went on to create such Broadway shows as “Torch Song Trilogy” and “La Cage Aux Folles.”
Brought up in Brooklyn, the 59-year-old Fierstein has likened his artistic process to talmudic study: “There is something about the way we study the Torah that’s different from the way other cultures study their stuff,” he told the Forward.
After playing Tevye in a Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Fierstein has gone backstage again. This year the musical “Kinky Boots” — with his book and Cyndi Lauper’s music — was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won six including Best Musical and Cyndi Lauper for Best Score.
“Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith,” Fierstein told the Forward. “Strangers sit in a room together and believe together. It’s a leap of faith [on their part]… I want people to feel more represented, heard and less alone.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
