Gay playwright/actor/drag icon Charles Busch would love to appear on Logo's hit cable reality TV series RuPaul's Drag Race. But only as a guest judgenot as a contestant.
"Could you start the whisper campaign now?" asked Busch with a laugh during a recent telephone interview. Busch spoke with the Windy City Times in advance of his multi-city cabaret concert tour, which includes two shows of That Girl, That Boy! at the recently renamed Pride Arts Center in Chicago.
Busch is famed in the theater world for writing and starting as eccentric leading ladies in campy drag comedies that simultaneously spoof and honor golden age Hollywood films. Vampire Lesbians of Sodom ( 1985 ), Red Scare on Sunset ( 1991 ) and The Divine Sister ( 2010 ) are just a few of Busch's acclaimed off-Broadway plays, though he also found some mainstream success in 2000 with his Tony Award-nominated Broadway hit comedy The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.
On film, Busch got even more exposure from his own stage-to-screen adaptations of Psycho Beach Party ( 2000 ) and Die, Mommie, Die! ( 2003 ). Busch's theater career is also lovingly captured in the 2005 documentary The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch.
But performing a cabaret act is something relatively new for Busch. It's an opportunity that only arose a few years ago when he was invited to perform on a gay cruise.
The offer both intrigued and terrified Busch. Would he perform out of drag, or in it? Would he be himself or play a character?
"The show is really me as myself, even though I'm dressed up in drag. I'm Charles Busch and I'm telling true stories about my career and my life and singing a collection of very beautiful songs by the likes of Stephen Sondheim and from the Great American Songbook," Busch said. "At this point, I'm so comfortable with my own androgyny that being in drag is not such a transformation for me. It's really just a state of mind."
To construct the cabaret act, Busch sought out the help of longtime friend Tom Judson to be his music director. An accomplished composer ( Metropolitan ), actor ( Broadway tours of Cabaret and 42nd Street ) and accompanist, Judson also had a brief career as a gay-porn star under the name of Gus Mattox.
"There are some places we go where ( Judson ) is the one they're interested in," laughed Busch. "We were playing in Madison, Wisconsin, and there was one fellow who had the complete set of DVDs for Tom to autograph and recalled in great detail all his famous scenes. I just wanted to say, 'Hey, wait a minuteI was in the show, too!'"
Busch is keen to be back again in Chicago, where he got valuable theater training as an undergrad at Northwestern University. Busch also said he loved living a "Sally Bowles in Cabaret-type of existence" for two years in Chicago after graduation before he eventually returned home to New York.
Busch recently touched on the importance of Chicago to his theater career in a piece he wrote for The New York Times, detailing the first time he performed in drag for a 1976 conjoined twin comedy called Sister Act in his final year at Northwestern. The fact that Busch wasn't getting cast too often in college production made him realize that he would have to carve out his own performance career by writing his own material.
Chicago also figures into one of Busch's "major disasters" with his touring solo show Hollywood Confidential. Busch was invited to perform it at Victory Gardens Theater in the late 1970s by then artistic director Dennis Zacek.
"The critics just hated it," Busch said. "The reviews were scathing and the gay papers and supermarket weeklies were even worse… It was terrible, but at the same time there was something perversely thrilling that, 'Wow, I guess they think that I'm important enough to destroy.' When I got back to New York, I was pretty devastated, but I'm pretty resilient. After about three weeks of wanting to kill myself, I pulled myself up and had another booking."
With his cabaret act, Busch is enjoying the travel and connecting with fans in more intimate theater settings.
"I'm finding it very moving meeting people who've been following my career for all of these years and have never seen me in person, but know me by my films or plays from local productions," said Busch, offering many thanks to Chicago's longtime camp comedy theater Hell in a Handbag Productions for staging many of his plays.
Busch is also happy to see the art form of drag becoming so mainstream, especially with the worldwide success of RuPaul's Drag Race. Though he never misses an episode, Busch acknowledges that he and fellow drag star Lipsynka ( aka John Epperson ) have chatted about the show, agreeing that they would be terrified to actually compete on the show due to its extremely difficult challenges.
"We're worried that we wouldn't last one episode," Busch said.
Charles Busch: That Girl, That Boy is at 7:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday, Jan. 29-30, in The Broadway space of the Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway. Tickets are $75 for reserved seats and $40 for general admission. Call 800-737-0984 or visit PrideFilmsAndPlays.com .
Read an interview with Tom Judson online at WindyCityMediaGroup.com .