Charles Busch

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.

Busch was born in 1954 and grew up in Hartsdale, New York.

He is the Jewish son of Gertrude (née Young) and Benjamin Busch.

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 30s and 40s.

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.

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."

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.

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.

and Psycho Beach Party, which ran from July 1987 to May 1988.

Busch rewrote the book for the musical Ankles Aweigh for a 1988 production staged by the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut.

Other works include 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.

He also wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s.

Other works of the 1990s include Swingtime Canteen, produced at the Blue Angel, New York City, in August 1995.

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.

In 1993, he wrote a novel, Whores of Lost Atlantis, a fictionalized re-telling of the creation of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.

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.

His one-man show, Flipping My Wig ran at the WPA Theater, New York City, starting in December 1996.

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.

He wrote Queen Amarantha, which played at the WPA Theatre, starting in October 1997.

Busch's early film appearances include Ms. Ellen, a fortune teller in drag in Trouble on the Corner (1997).

His play Die, Mommie, Die! was first performed in Los Angeles, opening in July 1999 at the Coast Playhouse.

Busch has twice appeared in film versions of his own plays: Die, Mommie, Die! (1999) and the comedy horror Psycho Beach Party (2000).

His best known play is The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.