Interview: Charles Busch, Tom Judson, and a Valentine's Day Cabaret

On Saturday night, before the Stage Q production of "Psycho Beach Party", I got the opportunity to chat with "Psycho Beach Party" playwright Charles Busch and his cabaret partner/pianist Tom Judson about their Sunday evening show in downtown Madison as well as Charles/Tom's performance backgrounds.

When did you start writing plays?

Charles: I was writing plays as a little kid. It's funny because I was so bad in school and got so little encouragement, but when I think about it, at 11-years-old I was writing plays and screenplays and books to imaginary musicals. And yet, no teacher ever thought I was special - no teacher ever encouraged me.

I was fortunate - I was basically raised by my aunt after my mother died when I was seven. I was raised by my aunt Lillian who lived in New York City who was a very extraordinary woman who really got me. The outside world might have thought I was odd, but she thought I was remarkable.

I was always taking acting classes in New York City outside of school.

So I was always writing. I didn't really take it seriously until about my senior year in college at Northwestern - I was a theatre major. I hadn't really thought it out too much, but I imagined that the dream was to be an actor. And in 1972 when I got to college, there really weren't gay roles. It seemed to me that there were no parts I would ever be right for. I was never cast at Northwestern and I thought university theatre is a micro chasm of the real world and I might have trouble finding a career as an actor. I always wrote, but then I decided to take it a little more seriously.

I wrote a play my senior year in college and produced it on campus, directed it and acted in it. And it really seemed like 'this is who I am' and this is what I should do. So I pursued that.

I never really pursued an acting career. I thought I had something to offer, but I'd have to write the role myself to express it. I have an androgynous nature and thought I'd write plays. Whatever other people thought made me un-castable is the very thing that makes me special. So that's what I did and now it's worked out.

Is it typical to do a cabaret in a city while one of Charles' shows is being produced?

Tom: This is the second or third time we've come in conjunction with the production of one of your plays.

Charles: That also seems to be happening these days more and more. A theatre will be doing a production of one my plays and then bring us out to do our show in conjunction with it.

It doesn't happen very often - how many playwrights have a cabaret act?

So, did you write the cabaret together?

Tom: This one especially - Charles really came up with a very concrete theme. Once he has the general idea we collaborate on the song choices.

Charles: But Tom has an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music - much more than I do. It's an honest to God collaboration on the set list. Tom comes up with songs I'm not familiar with.

Tom: This happens quite frequently, one or the other of us will suggest a song and the other will resist it. But we're both really good about giving them a chance. And usually we end up putting things in - but once in a while ...

Charles: You reject a lot of my ideas.

[Both laugh]

Tom: Charles will suggest something and I'll be like 'I don't know...' and then I end up loving it. There are a lot of instances where my initial reaction was 'that's not going to work' and then it does.

Charles: We're doing a show on Feb. 26 in New York at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook Series. We're so thrilled to be doing that. And we've never done a themed show - usually our shows are a potpourri of songs we like and personal anecdotes. It's very rehearsed, but it gives the illusion that you're in my living room.

I thought for this American Songbook Series that it would be interesting to do a show that has a bit of a through line. I knew, personally, these remarkable women of New York cabaret that died in the last few years who I knew would make an interesting show so we called it "the Lady at the Mic". We're paying tribute to some of these people who are more familiar than others: Elaine Stritch, Polly Bergen, Julie Wilson, a wonderful singer who died quite young Mary Cleere Haran, and Joan Rivers - the one non singer - who I was closest to.

Typically, the singing ladies didn't introduce songs, but they did contribute to the American songbook as far as choosing songs that were forgotten gems or turning popular songs into standards. It's been interesting finding songs...we're doing a lot of Stephen Sondheim actually because a lot of these ladies really were great Sondheim interpreters. I've never done Sondheim before, but it's fascinating. I can see why everyone likes singing them, they're so theatrical.

[The show being performed in New York later this month is the show they will be performing on Sunday night in Madison]

Tom, what kind of musical background do you have?

Tom: When I moved to New York I wanted to be a composer and lyricist. And I was, off-off Broadway for many years - very prolific - including Vampire Lesbians and the original theme song for that. Then I somehow wound up being cast in the National tour for the show Cabaret [as one of the Kit-Kat boys] so for a few years I doing Broadway musicals. I did Cabaret and 42nd Street [as Oscar the rehearsal pianist] on tour and I also did the Studio 54 production in New York.

I [also] wrote the music for some independent movies.

Charles: One of the first, big independent movies was Metropolitan and he scored that. That was one of the first independent films that made a sensation.

Tom: And I wrote a lot of T.V. jingles and that sort of thing - and then I just stopped for some reason. I just stopped writing. Once I a while I'd do a solo cabaret act which is what I was doing around the same time that Charles got his gig on the ship [four years ago, Charles was asked to do a cabaret on a cruise ship which is how the cabaret partnership with Tom began]. So, it was perfect timing because I had already been doing that myself. We were both in that world. It was good timing.

What should people expect from your cabaret at the Brink Lounge?

Charles: Well it's certainly different from what you'd expect.

I've done cabaret in different periods of my life. It's been four years since Tom and I have been working together...I love the intimacy of cabaret and that it's a way of really being yourself, being very honest and unguarded. Yet, that's a challenge if someone's in drag, because usually drag is perceived as a mask and I want to be unmasked. But after doing this for 40 years, my mask is so transparent that it doesn't really exist anymore. I can really be myself on stage. I might look like Ginger from Gilligan's Island, but I can really be honest. I'm pretty much myself on stage. And Tom introduces me as Charles Busch. It's not like someone who has a persona - I'm just myself. I've just dialed up the theatricality a bit.

It's really just me.

When we were in London last year - the great actor Sir Ian McKellen came to our show. And I was chatting with him afterwards and he said 'it's so wonderful how you never break character. You're always that lady'. And I thought 'it's because I'm not playing a character.'

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