Episode Details

In this new episode of “THEATER: All the Moving Parts”, host Patrick Pacheco talks with two of the theater’s most prolific and engaging writers. First, playwright Charles Busch takes us on a roller-coaster ride through his life and career, as recounted in his new memoir: “Leading Lady”. Then, joining Pacheco is Theresa Rebeck, who continues to provoke audiences with new entries to her extraordinarily prolific career: the Broadway comedy drama, “I Need That”, starring Danny DeVito, and the Off-Broadway play, “Dig”.

These riveting interviews serve as a double-feature of comedy and pathos as Busch, with a candor and outrageousness reflected in his memoirs, opines on: the porous membrane between male and female sexuality among drag artists; perceiving his personal life as a long-running situation comedy (the “episode” as a go-go boy is among the funniest); and the way in which so many of his “mother roles” may well be a search for his own, who died when he was young.

In conversation with Pacheco during the second half, Rebeck is open, honest and amusing as she, a book-lover, speaks about her “cluttered” life—although she clarifies that she is not a hoarder nor, for that matter, is Sam, the wise-cracking hero played by Danny DeVito in “I Need That”. Rebeck confesses to her attraction for losers, such as the characters of “Dig”. They are the latest additions to her prodigious gallery of lost souls, which has made her the most-produced female playwright in America.

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