User:Alibagbey/charlesbusch

Charles Louis Busch (born August 23, 1954) is an American actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and producer of drag performance from Hartsdale, New York.

Early Life

Family

• Busch was born in 1954 and grew up in a New York City suburb, Hartsdale.
• Father’s name: Benjamin Busch. Mother’s name: Gertrude Young Busch. He has two older sisters named Meg and Betsy.
• Meg is now a producer of promotional spots for Showtime and Betsy is a textile designer.
• Father wanted to be an Opera singer but settled for owning a record store.
• Mother was a homemaker who died when he was young.
• Busch’s aunt, Lillian Blum, brought him to live in Manhattan after the death of his mother.

• Busch was obsessed with film as a young child, especially films with strong female leads from the 30s and 40s.
• Blum was his mother's oldest sister and a former teacher.

Education

• Blum helped get him into the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. "He was so shy it was almost pathological...Before he moved in with me, I would pick him up in Hartsdale on a Friday afternoon, and he would be like a zombie. But the minute we crossed the river to the New York he was absolutely a new boy." The quotes need to be cited, just as you would cite any direct quote from a source in a regular paper. It must be cited AT THE QUOTE, not later in the paper.
• Blum insisted he read the front page of the paper every day just to help him keep at least one foot in the real world.
• B.A. in drama from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1976.
• Graduated from the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan and then moved on to Northwestern University where he majored in drama.

Career

Chart of productions and his role in them:

o Hollywood Confidential – one person show, first produced at One Sheridan Swuare Theatre in 1978 in New York City

o Alone with a Cast of Thousands- One person show first produced at the Source Theatre in 1980 in Washington DC

o Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium- first produced at the Limbo Lounge in 1984 in New York City

o Vampire Lesbians of Sodom- First produced at the Limbo Lounge in 1984 in New York City

o Times Square Angel- First produced at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1985 in NYC.

o Pardon My Inquisition- First produced at the Limbo Lounce in 1986 in NYC

o Psycho Beach Party- First produced at the Players Theatre in 1987 in NYC

o Adaptor, Ankles Aweigh- First produced at Godspeed Opera House in 1989 in East Haddam, CT.

o The Lady In Question- First produced at the WPA Theatre in 1988 in NYC.

o Red Scare on Sunset- First produced at WPA Theatre in 1991 in NYC.

o Charles Busch Revue- Produced at the Ballroom Theatre in 1993 in NYC.

o Whores of Lost Atlantis- Novel written in 1993, published by Hyperion.

o You Should Be So Lucky: A New Comedy- First Produced at Fireside Theatre in 1994 in Garden City, NY.

o Swingtime Canteen- Produced at the Blue Angel Supper Club in 1995 in NYC.

o Queen Amarantha- First produced at the WPA Theatre in 1997 in NYC.

o The Green Heart- Novel which later became a musical adaptation which was produced at the Variety Arts Theatre in 1997 in NYC. Complete list from

Television

• Busch had a recurring role in the HBO series Oz from 1999-2000. He played an "effeminate but makeup-free inmate on death row, certainly a departure from his usual glamour girl roles."
• He sells television sitcom pilots and movie treatments, which is what earned him a living while he was a cult performer.'
• He sold three pilots to CBS that never saw production.

=== Performance Style ===This is a list of interesting general factoids. Can you expand with some additional supporting context?

• Busch's stye is based on movie star acting rather than just "real life" femininity.
• Busch creates theatre without a political agenda, viewers can say his performances are activist in nature
• Busch's performances had a certain "sensibility" about them. Meaning, there is a specific relationship that connects a particular audience with a certain cultural product.
• Predominantly individuals who are white, middle class, and gay. Usually between 20 to 40 years old
• Busch specializes in femme fatales. "I'm an actor playing a role, but it's drag. A lot of drag can be very offensive, but I like to think that in some crazy way the women I play are feminist heroines." [Dodds]

Camp and Gay Sensibility

• "Camp" is a style of performance that Busch used throughout his career.
• This term refers to the "characteristically gay way of handling values, images, and products of the dominant culture through irony, exaggeration, trivialization, theatricalization and an ambivalent making fun of and out of the serious and respectable"
• Camp is a means to re-imagine things. It take the real, hostile world and turns it into one that is comfortable and safe. It exaggerates the normal which makes it less threatening. It creates a world in which the real becomes unreal and the threatening becomes unthreatening.

Influences

• Charles Ludlam is also a drag artist. He founded The Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967 and wrote, directed, and acted in the shows produced by the company. These shows were exaggerated performances that used the camp sensability to its fullest. This is one of the main places that Busch got his inspiration from. Similarities can easily be seen between this theatre company and Theatre in Limbo, the company that Busch founded in his career.
• Busch worked briefly with this company
• First professional act he ever saw was Joan Sutherland.
• Busch tells a story from when he was 13 (1968 or 69) and went to see Zoe Caldwell in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• After the show, he wandered backstage and found her in her dressing room. They spoke, and he told her he wanted to be an actor. She encouraged him, saying “You have the face of an actor.”
• He always wanted her to see him perform.
• In 1991 Busch was doing performances of his play Red Scare on Sunset. One of the performances was particularly difficult. The audience was not into the show, and his performance was strained. Ms. Caldwell happened to be at this show. She came backstage after his performance and gave him some bracing advice: “You are beautiful. But you were pushing too hard. You’re much better than that.”
• Busch states that this was the best lesson he ever learned from a famous person.

Challenges

• Busch endured several struggles during his college years as a performer. He was described as "too thin, too light, which is the euphemism for gay. I was never cast at Northwestern for basically these reasons, and finally, I thought maybe what's most disturbing about me is what is most unique: my theatrical sense, my androgyny, even identifying with old movie actresses," said Busch.
• He began to write his own material, such as a play called Sister Act about siamese twin showgirls. The uniqueness of his work made a large impact on the college as Northwestern had never seen anything like it. [Gay & Lesbian]
• During his career as a playwright and actor he held various odd jobs to pay the rent” office temp, apartment cleaner, portrait artist, salesperson, shop manager, ice cream server, sports handicapper, artists’ model.
• Due to their similar careers and performance styles, Busch was sometimes compared to Ludlam, however, these comparisons were not always positive.Such as? Why? Do you have any specific quotes or examples that bear this generalized assertion out?

Accomplishments

• Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is the longest-running non-musical off Broadway.
• His company, Theatre in Limbo, attracted a large and very loyal gay following
• New York Times named Busch "New York's most beloved drag performer"
• He has been a member of the Writers Guild of America since 1989.

Awards and Nominations

• Received the Charlie Local and National Comedy Award from the Association of Comedy Artists in 1985 for “special contributions to the art of comedy”
• Also received the Manhattan Academy of Cabaret Award in 1985 and 1993

Quotes

• "I've always played a duality. I guess I've always felt a duality in myself: elegance and vulgarity. There's humor in that. I've always found that fun on stage, as well. It's ot enough for me to be the whore. I have to be the whore with pretensions or the great lady with a vulgar streak. It's the duality that I find interesting."
• "I'm an actor playing a role, but why mince words. It's drag. A lot of drag can be very offensive, but I like to think that in some crazy way the women I play are feminist heroines."
• "I'm not sure what [campy] means, but I guess if my plays have elements of old movies and old fashioned plays and I'm this bigger-than-life star lady, that's certainly campy. I guess what I rebelled against was the notion that campy means something is so tacky or bad that it's good, and that I just didn't relate to."
• "Drag is being more, more than you can be. When I first started drag I wasn't this shy young man but a powerful woman. It liberated within me a whole vocabulary of expression. It was less a political statement than an aesthetic one." [Gay & Lesbian]

=== Theatre in Limbo ===You need to rework this section. Right now, it is a bit backwards and also slim in terms of information and ideas. What shows did they perform--any of Busch's big hits? Etc.

• Large and loyal gay following
• By 1984, Busch's performance bookings grew slim. His last hurrah was to be a skit put on in the Limbo Lounge, which was a gay bar in the East Village of Manhattan. The skit was a huge hit which eventually became his most famous play, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. He and his collaborators then created a series of shows at the bar such as Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium and Times Square Angel. The company would henceforth be known as the Theatre-in-Limbo, after the bar in which they started. [Gay & Lesbian]

Reference List

“Charles Busch.” Gay and Lesbian Biography. Ed. Michael J. Tyrkus and Michael

Bronski. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 18 Sept. 2011

"Charles Busch." Newsmakers. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 18 Sept. 2011.

"Charles in Charge." Advocate 28 Mar. 2000: 81-82. Web. 18 Sept. 2011.

Dodds, Richard. ""Psycho Beach Party" Goes from a Joke to a Play." Times-

Picayune [New Orleans, La] 16 Nov. 1990, Lagniappe sec.: L16. Print.

Niles, Richard. "Wigs, Laughter, and Subversion: Charles Busch and Strategies of Drag

Performance." Drag Queen Anothology. Haworth, 2004. 35-52. Print.

Piepenberg, Eric. “You Never Forget That Star-Struck Encounter With Your Idol.” The

New York Times [New York City] 02 Sept. 2010, New York ed: C3. Print