Actors - Charles Busch

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	Actors - Charles Busch

Charles Busch is an actor and writer who has appeared in many off-Broadway productions.

He first came to prominence as the actor and star of a variety of plays that both sent up and celebrated classic film genres. Most ran successfully for some time Off-Broadway, most notably the long-running smash Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984), plus Psycho Beach Party
(1987), The Lady in Question (1989) and Red Scare on Sunset (1991). (Less well-known are some shorter works in the same vein: Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium , Sleeping Beauty, or Coma and Pardon My Inquisition, or Kiss the Blood Off My Castanets .) His 1999 play Die, Mommie, Die! ran only in Los Angeles, where it was later made into a feature film (2003).

The 1990s found Charles Busch experimenting in various ways to broaden his horizons as a writer and performer. The results included an appearance in someone else's play (1993's revival of Genet's The Maids
), a new Busch comedy in which he starred a male role (1994's You Should Be So Lucky), a hilarious roman à clef (1995's Whores of Lost Atlantis), an autobiographical one-man show (1996's Flipping My Wig) and a serious valentine to melodrama in which Busch played a woman without going for laughs (1997's Queen Amarantha), as well as brief appearances in movies like Addams Family Values
(1993), It Could Happen to You
(1994) and Trouble on the Corner (1997).

In spring 2001, Mr. Busch's work debuted on Broadway, when The Tale of the Allergist's Wife opened (having run successfully Off-Broadway the previous season). This smash hit comedy was his first piece not to star himself; it was written as a vehicle for the great Linda Lavin, who played opposite Michele Lee and Tony Roberts. Allergist's Wife received a 2001 Tony Award nomination for Best Play and ran for 777 performances. (Late in the run, Valerie Harper and Richard Kind took over the lead roles.) His only other Broadway work to date has been as author of the rewritten book for Boy George's autobiographical musical Taboo, which only lasted 100 performances despite the best efforts of producer Rosie O'Donnell and a dazzling cast headed by George O'Dowd himself and rising star Raúl Esparza.

In addition to the short film turns already mentioned, Charles Busch has twice appeared in film versions of his own plays: 2000's Psycho Beach Party
(with Lauren Ambrose playing the Gidget role Busch originated onstage and Busch playing the new part of the policewoman trying to solve the mystery) and 2003's Die, Mommie, Die!, for which he won a Sundance Special Performance Award.

Recent years have found Busch only occasionally appearing onstage. Since 2000, every December he has starred in a one-night-only staged readings of his 1984 Christmas play Times Square Angel. In 2003, he headlined a Drama Dept. revival of his 1999 play Shanghai Moon (costarring B. D. Wong). And there have been three turns as Auntie Mame, two of them all-star staged readings (fall 1998 and 2003) and one a scaled-down summer touring production (2004).

Busch fans eagerly await the world premiere of his new play about Laura Keene, the famous 19th century actress who starred in the production of Our American Cousin that Abraham Lincoln attended the night he was assassinated in Ford's Theatre. Though originally announced for production in the 2004-05 Manhattan Theater Club season, the play has yet to be performed.

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