Charles Louis Busch (born August 23, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and drag queen, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays off-off-Broadway beginning in 1978, generally in drag roles, and also acted in the works of other playwrights. He also wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s. His best known play is The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.
Biography Early life Busch was born in 1954 and grew up in Hartsdale, New York. He is the Jewish son of Gertrude (née Young) and Benjamin Busch."Charles Busch Biography", Filmreference.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012Witchell, Alex. "Shopping With: Charles Busch; After Divas, It's a Challenge To Play a Man" (abstract). The New York Times, October 19, 1994, Section C; p.1 His father, who wanted to be an opera singer, owned a record store. His mother died when Busch was seven. He has two older sisters: Meg Busch, who used to be a producer of promotional spots for Showtime, and Betsy Busch, a textile designer. Busch's aunt, Lillian Blum, his mother's oldest sister and a former teacher, brought him to live in Manhattan after the death of his mother. Busch was intensely interested in films as a young child, especially those with female leads from the 1930s and 1940s.
Busch attended The High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. He majored in drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and received his B.A. in 1976. While at the university, Busch had difficulty being cast in plays and began to write his own material, which succeeded in drawing interest on campus.
Early theatre years
In his plays, Busch usually played the leading lady in drag. He has said, "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." His camp style shows simultaneously send up and celebrate classic film genres.
Busch has said, however, "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." Busch toured the country in a non-drag one-man show he wrote called Alone With a Cast of Thousands from 1978 to 1984.
By 1984, Busch's performance bookings grew slim. He held various odd jobs, such as temporary office assistant, apartment cleaner, portrait artist "at bar mitzvahs", phone salesperson, shop manager, ice cream server, sports handicapper and artists' model.
He thought perhaps that this last piece would be a skit put on in the Limbo Lounge, a performance space and gallery in the East Village in Manhattan. The skit was a hit and became Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984).
Busch and his collaborators soon created a series of shows, mostly at the Limbo Lounge, such as Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium (1984) and Times Square Angel (1985, Provincetown Playhouse). The company called itself "Theatre in Limbo" and attracted a loyal gay following. Other early plays include Pardon My Inquisition, or Kiss the Blood Off My Castanets (1986), in which Busch played both Maria Garbanza, a prostitute, and her look-alike, the elegant Marquesa del Drago;"Charles Busch, 'Pardon My Inquisition, or Kiss the Blood Off My Castanets' Listing" , doollee.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012Bennetts, Leslie. Busch Writes His Own", The New York Times (abstract), August 13, 1987, Section C, p. 21 Psycho Beach Party, which ran from July 1987 to May 1988; The Lady in Question, which ran from July to December 1989 at the Orpheum Theatre; and Red Scare on Sunset, which ran from June to September 1991 at the Lortel Theatre.
Busch rewrote the book for the musical Ankles Aweigh for a 1988 production staged by the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut.Klein, Alvin. "Ankles Aweigh Gets Goodspeed Revamping", The New York Times (abstract), September 11, 1988, Section 12CN, p. 13
His Charles Busch Revue was produced at the Ballroom Theatre in May 1993 in New York. Also in 1993, he performed in a revival of Jean Genet's The Maids at the Off-Broadway Classic Stage Company in the role of Solange.Brantley, Ben. "Review/Theater; Drag Star Tries On a More Serious Context", The New York Times (abstract), September 30, 1993
In 1993, he wrote a novel, Whores of Lost Atlantis, a fictionalized re-telling of the creation of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.Busch, Charles. Whores of Lost Atlantis, Hyperion (1993) The Green Heart was adapted by Busch from a short story by Jack Ritchie into a musical which was produced by the Manhattan Theater Club at the Variety Arts Theatre in New York City, opening in April 1997.Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review.How Cold Villainy Adds Warmth", The New York Times, April 11, 1997.
He took the male lead in his comedy, You Should Be So Lucky which opened at Primary Stages Company, New York City, in November 1994.Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review.Charles Busch Takes On a Trouser Role", The New York Times, November 3, 1994.
Other works of the 1990s include Swingtime Canteen, produced at the Blue Angel, New York City, in August 1995.Van Gelder, Lawrence. "Theater Review; Charles Busch Replaces Female Lead", The New York Times, August 25, 1995 His one-man show, Flipping My Wig ran at the WPA Theater, New York City, starting in December 1996.Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review.Between a Female Image and Fantasy", The New York Times, December 20, 1996.
He wrote Queen Amarantha, which played at the WPA Theatre, starting in October 1997.Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review.Charles Busch Plays It Straight, So to Speak", The New York Times, October 24, 1997. His play Die, Mommie, Die! was first performed in Los Angeles, opening in July 1999 at the Coast Playhouse.
Film and television Busch's early film appearances include Ms. Ellen, a fortune teller in drag in Trouble on the Corner (1997). Busch has twice appeared in film versions of his own plays: Die, Mommie, Die! (1999) and the comedy horror Psycho Beach Party (2000). He co-wrote, starred in and directed the film A Very Serious Person (2006), which starred Polly Bergen and received an honorable mention at the Tribeca Film Festival. allrovi.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012 In 2020, Busch co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the film, The Sixth Reel (2021).
Busch had a recurring role in the HBO series Oz from 1999 to 2000 (the third and fourth seasons) as Nat Ginzburg, an "effeminate but makeup-free inmate on death row, certainly a departure from his usual glamour girl roles." He wrote television sitcom pilots and movie treatments as a source of extra income while he was a cult performer. He sold three pilots to CBS that were not produced. In 2001, he guest starred on the American soap opera, One Life to Live, playing Peg Barlow, a woman who owns a modeling agency. Nowhere in the show was it referenced that a male actor was portraying a woman.
Stage work, 2000–present Busch's work debuted on Broadway in October 2000, when The Tale of the Allergist's Wife opened, following an Off-Broadway run in February through April 2000. The play, his first in which he did not star, and the first created for a mainstream audience, was written for actress Linda Lavin,Shewey, Don. "The Tale of Charles Busch: From Drag Diva to Broadway Farceur", The New York Times (reprinted at donshewey.com), October 29, 2000 who played opposite Michele Lee and Tony Roberts. Allergist's Wife received a 2001 nomination for Tony Award for Best Play and ran for 777 performances. His other Broadway work was rewriting the book for Boy George's short-lived autobiographical musical Taboo. Since 2000, Busch has performed an annual one-night staged reading of his 1984 Christmas play Times Square Angel.Bacalzo, Dan. Charles Busch to Star in Times Square Angel Staged Reading December 13", Theatermania.com, September 29, 2010 In January 2003, he headlined a revival of his 1999 play Shanghai Moon, costarring BD Wong, at the Drama Dept, Greenwich House Theatre, New York City.Somer, Elyse. "A CurtainUp Review. Shanghai Moon", Curtainup.com, January 17, 2003. Retrieved January 8, 2012
He has taken the eponymous lead in three productions of Auntie Mame: a staged reading in 1998; a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS in 2003; and a small-scale summer touring production in 2004.
Our Leading Lady, Busch's play about Laura Keene, was produced by the Manhattan Theater Club at the City Center Stage II Theatre, in 2007, and starred Kate Mulgrew.Cote, David. "Review. Our Leading Lady ", Time Out Magazine (New York), March 21, 2007 His play, The Third Story, premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in September 2008 with Mary Beth Peil as Peg,McNulty, Charles. Charles Busch's 'The Third Story' at LaJolla Playhouse", Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2008. and was then produced in New York by MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, starring Busch and Kathleen Turner (Peg), opening in February 2009.Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review. For Some Mothers, Letting Go Is So Hard to Do", The New York Times, February 3, 2009 Busch wrote and starred in a play, The Divine Sister, a satirical take on Hollywood films about religion, including Doubt and the Sound of Music. It ran at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City, opening in September 2010.Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review. No Doubt, Not a Typical Singing Nun", The New York Times, September 22, 2010 In 2013, Busch wrote and starred as Jimmy in the Primary Stages production of The Tribute Artist.Stasio, Marilyn. "Off Broadway Review: 'The Tribute Artist'". Variety. February 9, 2014 In 2017, Busch and his former Auntie Mame co-star Penny Fuller both appeared in voiceover roles in the world premiere production of DIVA: Live From Hell. In March 2019, Busch starred as Lucille Ball in I Loved Lucy by playwright Lee Tannen at the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, New York.
In 2020, Primary Stages mounted another Busch play, The Confession of Lily Dare, which opened at Cherry Lane Theatre. For this production, Busch received Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play and an Off Broadway Alliance Award nomination for Best Play. Primary Stages later selected Busch and his frequent collaborator Carl Andress to be the honorees at their annual gala and the joint recipients of the 2022 Einhorn Mentorship Award. In 2024, Busch's play Ibsen's Ghost was co-produced by Primary Stages and the George Street Playhouse.
Performance style and influences Busch's style is based on movie star acting rather than naturalistic femininity. Busch later said that 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". He specializes in femmes 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."