Charles Busch some kind of diva Essay Example For Students

Charles Busch: some kind of diva Essay Innocence isnt something youd expect to be thinking about if you were to find yourself sitting amidst the opulent fin-desiecle passementerie that fills the sitting room of New Yorks best-loved theatrical drag performer, chatting about his recent experience playing the female lead in The Maids, Jean Genets transvestite drama of madness, envy and murder. Yet theres something disarmingly unguarded, something waiflike, about Charles Busch. At first, it takes you by surprise. When youve seen him sprawled across the velvet throws that cover a sofa in his Greenwich Village apartment, though, it gets easier to sense in the adult Busch a lithe, slight figure with corn-fed looks and a precocious adolescents rapidfire delivery a ghost of the awestruck eight-year-old who was taken by his father to the old Metropolitan Opera house to see Joan Sutherland perform. The theatre itself, the gilt on the ceiling Id never seen anything more fantastic, Busch recalls some 30 years later. And then there she was, with this red hair and this pale green dress. Just huge. He pauses. Ive been recreating that ever since. Outline1 Fiendish cross-fertilization  2 Stolen hairstyles  3 Mistresses of melodrama   Fiendish cross-fertilization   As anyone whos been keeping up with Off-Broadway theatre for the past decade or so knows, those re-creations have taken the form of the benzedrinelaced send-ups of Hollywood and Broadway leading-lady vehicles that have made Busch famous. In them, you sense that precocious child at work. Like fiendish theatrical cross-fertilizations dreamt up by some star-struck high school chemistry whiz, the vehicles that Busch has created for himself are gleefully loony hybrids. They remind you of the screenplays being pitched by those desperate writers the beginning of Robert Altmans The Player. Buschs The Lady in Question? Its Watch on the Rhine meets The Sound of Music. Psycho Beach Party? Try Gidget meets The Three Faces of Eve meets Mommie Dearest. Yet if the mere titles of drag parodies like Vampire Lesbians of Sodom or Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium (not to mention Buschs recent first novel, Whores of Lost Atlantis) hint at preoccupations that are anything but kid stuff, Buschs over-the-top sensibility is clearly part of a coherent artistic vision that stems from his indelible first impression of the theatre. Now, that vision is taking Busch ever further from the satiric vehicles that made his reputation. Projects like The Maids demonstrate the actor-playwrights growing willingness to explore new theatrical avenues, as he examines all of the possibilities not merely the comic inherent in drag. The memory of that first trip to the opera evidently lingered in Buschs creative imagination. The leading role in nearly all of his plays is, in fact, some kind of diva: a movie queen, a concert pianist, a cabaret chanteuse. As a result, each performance, no matter how hilarious the particulars, is ultimately about performance. Even if Busch didnt tell you that the Pirandellian notion he had in mind when he first started writing roles for himself was that hed be just this grande dame actress appearing in a play that she didnt quite approve of, itd be hard not to sense in the artful staginess of Buschs performances that he was playing an actress whos playing well, whatever. Stolen hairstyles   The thing that allows Busch to get away with this metatheatrical conceit (Busch has appropriated the term from a recent NYU dissertation about his plays, and he uses it with the proprietary pleasure you associate with the owners of new appliances) is his remarkably thorough knowledge of film and theatre history, coupled with an uncanny knack for verbal and visual mimicry. Busch recalls being accosted by one fan who, he says, recognized every hairstyle in Lady in Question and what movie I stole it from. And, he adds with a yelp, he was right! That almost scholarly attention to detail and insistence on authenticity are what make his own parodies more than what he dismissively refers to as spoofs of spoofs of spoofs. .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d , .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .postImageUrl , .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d , .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:hover , .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:visited , .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:active { border:0!important; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:active , .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u582b2ebb782ea67e36dbd86046d0c73d:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Don't tell mother EssayThe fun, Busch goes on, is in getting the tone exactly rightmaking it seamless. And indeed, the 40s and 50s actresses who play Buschs leads are eerily familiaryou sometimes have to remind yourself that youre watching a takeoff, rather than some forgotten Stanwyck vehicle. When Irish OFlanagan, the hard-boiled nightclub singer who gets a Wonderful Life-esque chance at redemption in Times Square Angel, grits her teeth and talks about menthe shelf-life of a dames good looks is shortah than a can of chili, she growlsyou can practically count how many times shes been around the block. For Busch, theres nothing wrong with blurring the line between parody and straight performance. Even within a parody play, he observes, there are so many things you can do. You can have moments of tenderness; you can have moments of romance; you can have genuine suspense. Why waste that going for a vulgar laugh? Easy laughs are something Busch himself has increasingly avoided. He was especially pleased with Lady, a melodramatic thriller to which some audiences reacted with real emotion. And in Red Scare on Sunset, he gave his 50s-movie-queen heroine Mary Dale and her best gal-pal, radio hostess Pat Pilford, a moral ambiguity some found disturbing. (The play ends with Mary naming names to Congress, after a brush with conniving commies who were as bad as their right-wing adversaries.) Busch dismisses as humorless those who found Red Scare to be anti-left. Indeed, his P.C. critics seem to have missed the fact that, typically for Busch, Red Scare is preoccupied more with the theatre and its conventions than it is with politics. Im not a political satirist at all, Busch readily admits. Its not my sense of humor. Its no accident that the front used by the evil reds is a Method workshopa device that allows Busch to take regular swipes at the thespian pretensions that threaten his own more 19th-cent ury aesthetic. I cant wait to roll up my sleeves and go to work, cries one of Red Scares Brandowannabes. I have so many demons needing to be released! Mistresses of melodrama   One of Buschs own demons is a gnawing sense that grinding out spoofs of the silver screen wont satisfy him forever. That fear of artistic emptiness is what led him to Genet. Director David Esbjornsons vision of The Maids as a contemporary fantasy of homeless people, drug addicts and pimps, is a far cry from the crinolines and divans that clutter Buschs own dramas. But Busch wanted the challenge of something new. Thats why, when offered his pick of Genets three leads in the production at New Yorks Classic Stage Company, he settled on Solange the harder, more grounded of the two maids. He wanted to experiment with paring down his usual gestures (the body language of the diva) to suit Solanges proportions. I didnt want to do the grande dame sort of thing, he says, when asked why he didnt choose to play either the flashy Madame or the delusional Claire, Genets answer to Blanche DuBois. Busch is disarmingly frank when describing what he felt were his shortcomings at the beginning of the Genet run. The experiment with naturalistic acting, he ventures, may have gone a bit too much against his Bernhardtesque grain. It was not my old self, he says flatly. As a result, he found himself during rehearsals doing weird, self-conscious things, like breaking up his lines in mid-sentence. (Sandy Dennis-ish, he quips, without the fun.) Busch didnt begin to feel that he had a handle on Solange until he finally followed Esbjornsons advice to do what he does best that is, to get metatheatricalto be Glenda Jackson; be Faye Dunaway as Solange, as Esbjornson would urge him. .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 , .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .postImageUrl , .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 , .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:hover , .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:visited , .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:active { border:0!important; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:active , .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23 .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u0e58fd6985ca736cc462511499fe3c23:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Oliver Twist - Board Scene EssayThe Maids run sharpened Buschs sense that his strong suit is for the larger-than-life roles suited to his modelsmistresses of melodrama like Bernhardt, a special favorite. In the future, he says, its unlikely that hell essay any role in which he feels obliged to be all tense and small. Joan Sutherland, after all, stands nearly six feet tall.