Actor/playwright Charles Busch lives in Sarah Bernhardt's dressing room. Well, no, not actually, but his Greenwich Village studio is decorated in a manner strongly evocative of the great tragedienne: rich brocaded cushions sprawl over the daybed and sofa, the crimson walls are hung with fin-de-siecle memorabilia and theatrical posters, including many commemorating Busch's stage triumphs: Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Psycho Beach Party, Times Square Angel, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, the one-man show Flipping My Wig, and Queen Amarantha. It's a setting befitting a great lady of the stage.

We first met last month under very operatic circumstances indeed: I mean, we were introduced by Ira Siff at a Regine Crespin book promotion! The following week, we met for a chat, and, to my amazement, Busch turned out to be no opera queen at all!

James Jorden: Oh, you're joking! Now what are we going to talk about?

Charles Busch: I do go to the opera once in a while, if there's a real diva event or, sometimes because my big interest is 19^th century theater, and opera is as close as we can get to Sardou melodrama. I was really sort of disappointed when I saw Mirella Freni in Fedora and Adriana Lecouvreur - those are Bernhardt vehicles. Freni is just not a bravura actress. I was getting a little dozy waiting for the big moment. "Did she smell the violets yet?" "Yes, you missed it!" "Did she drink the poison yet?" "Yes, you missed it." You know, I thought she was really going to DRINK the POISON (he mimes Fedora clutching at her throat and rolling her eyes and making little gasping noises). The big moment! Eric reminded me that they only have a certain amount of music, but, still…, and so I thought, if Mirella Freni is The Last Diva, well - is that it? I'm sure she's really charming in Boheme, but she's just not a monster. That's what this sort of vehicle calls for.

JJ: There's nothing to sing there, really. It wants Faye Dunaway.

CB: Yeah! It was written for Bernhardt to go through her whole range of effects.

JJ: Rage, despair, suspicion, remorse, being thrown to the floor…

CB: Don't forget self-sacrifice…

JJ: Hair up, hair down, red dress, black dress, white dress…

CB: You're describing my career! I wrote a whole play around a white dress, The Woman in Question. I explained to the designer that in all those movies, when Garbo or Bette Davis wear that white dress, it's a symbol. Or Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams: all those other women wear spangles, but that simple white dress means of strength of character, purpose. I have actually worked out the story line of a play by listing moments I would like to play - a scene where my lover turns on me and I have to defend myself in a low, throbbing voice.

JJ: That's really an operatic mindset… you know, effects first, story later.

CB: I have this theory that the first experience you have as a child in the theater will shape your whole esthetic. For the rest of your life , you recreate that first time. The first theater I saw was my father performing with amateur opera companies with painted backdrops. The great diva of the Westchester Opera Guild was Marge Talamo. She was the soprano and her husband Eugene was the tenor; my father was their baritone. So I saw Marge Talamo's Violetta, Marge Talamo's Aida - I remember when she did Aida she actually cut her own bangs, used her own hair - she was serious! She was this middle-aged housewife, but on stage she created beauty and glamour to my seven-year-old eyes. I am Marge Talamo today! My father wanted to be an opera singer but he ended up owning a record store in Yonkers. My bedtime stories were all the Puccini and Verdi operas. From earliest childhood, then, I had the most outlandish romantic sensibility. I wrote all these stories of courtesans and knights and kings, and that, I think, led to my interest in 19^th century theater. My father took me to hear Joan Sutherland in Sonnambula in, when, 1963?

JJ: That far back?

CB: At the Old Met, the first time I went there. I can see it so perfectly in my mind, as if I just saw it this year. The vision of Sutherland, in that pale green dress and that long red hair, sleepwalking - she just seemed like the most beautiful image, in this romantic production. I I know that imprinted on my mind there is this image of a romantic, red-headed actress. Oh, it just kills me that I never saw Callas. I suppose I could have, but I was ten years old and I don't think they would let you stand in line… I was aware, though, at such a young age, of Sutherland, even before I saw here. I guess I knew the photos of her in the Zeffirelli productions. What else did I see? Martina Arroyo as Madama Butterfly at the Old Met; she didn't impress me as an actress. And Sutherland again, as Lucia, toward the end of her career, which was disappointing because I realized acting wasn't her trip at all. It was interesting to see her because of the legend, of course, but she did so little bravura acting at that point. I saw Hildegard Behrens do Tosca, and I don't think being a great diva was really her trip, but I loved the athleticism of the performance, the leap with the skirt flying.

JJ: You should try Makropulos Case with Malfitano this spring.

CB: Oh, I've seen her on TV, and Eric and I went to the premiere in Chicago of McTeague. She's a great actress, which I really enjoyed, very physical. If I go to the opera, it's purely if there's a theatrical connection - based on a Sardou play, or if there's a diva I need to see for "educational purposes." But Eric goes to the opera a lot, and then tells me about it after. But that's part of the fun of our marriage, that we both have so many interests NOT in common. At the end of the day we have something to talk about, and I can enjoy his pleasure. So I'm an Opera Widow. There was one evening, early in my marriage, when I felt like the second Mrs. De Winter. Eric took me to this gathering of opera queens. Now, I can keep up to a certain extent because I am an addictive reader of reviews, whether it's my interest or not. I read opera reviews, so I can have a fairly intelligent conversation even about singers like Renee Fleming or Deborah Voigt, even though I've never heard them in the theater. But I can say, oh, so Deborah Voigt is doing so-and-so, how was that? But this one party, it was just so fierce-you would have been right at home, but I just had to sit back and disappear. I feel so sorry for opera singers. I mean, in the theater we've got it tough with critics, but nothing compared to what happens to singers. I mean, The Times just dismissed Gwyneth Jones in Parsifal without even a mention of what she did as a dramatic actress: "Voice in shreds, she's old. That's it." And not a thought of something else going on. Tone queens!

JJ: So your first diva was Joan Sutherland. I would have sworn it was Norma Shearer!

CB: I've seen all these old movies and I've absorbed these women in me, but my real interest is stage actresses like Laurette Taylor or Lynne Fontanne. They never worked in movies, except peripherally, but I can in a sense see what they were like by studying Norma Shearer - she copied Fontanne who was influenced by Ellen Terry -- so there's a chain of effects. I have in my mind a very clear idea of what Sarah Bernhardt must have been like on stage - there are so many descriptions. I feel like I can evoke something of what she was like.

JJ: The difference between opera and straight theater, I think, is that opera never had the Method revolution..

CB: Except these younger singers in the last couple of decades shy away from the big gestures, thinking they're hokey. There was a young mezzo-soprano who asked me to coach her on Dalila. So she came over, and she sang it and I acted it, and she got into it, so she had these gestures to do. But when she went to rehearsal the director had a stroke, "Oh, God, what have you done!" And that's a pity.

JJ: I directed Adriana Lecouvreur a couple years ago, and the young singers just didn't get the idea of the stylized gestures…

CB: It can't be phony, but it's presentational. When Bernhardt made these big gestures, the critics likened her to Greek statues. They came out of a wellspring of emotion, but the only to express it was with a larger-than-life gesture. I mean, why are you singing? Because mere words cannot convey this overwhelming emotion. It comes out as singing, and it comes out as gesture.

JJ: You conceived Queen Amarantha, I think, as a Bernhardt-type vehicle.

CB: For the last few years I've been experimenting with different things. I played a male role, I wrote a novel, I did a cabaret act. I did a production of Genet's The Maids, which is ninety minutes of total unrelieved bitter rage, and it just ain't me, I don't have it in me. I can do melodrama, which is not much in demand these days.

JJ: But you've cornered the market!

CB: I enjoy the fact that I can play these 19^th century conventions, these old movie conventions, and I could have it both ways: the audience could really care if I was going to escape the Nazis on skis over the mountains, and spoof it at the same time. It seems a modern audience needs that veil of laughter to accept the melodrama. We live in such a cool age, we have to laugh at everything, especially anything that's highly romantic. We feel so superior to audiences of the past, and yet, if we could just allow ourselve the innocence to react…

JJ: I really advocate a lot of reaction in the theater, applauding the high note, applauding the entrance. I actually was asked to be in the claque for Fedora, so SOMEONE would applaud her entrance..

CB: As there should be! If there's not applause, it's embarassing. I mean, it's not as if they're doing Dialogues of the Carmelites. We were there to see Freni doing Fedora, a beloved star at the end of her career in a black dress and a white dress… that's why we were in that theater, so we should go for it.

JJ: Maybe you could do Fedora sometimes.

CB: I played Thedora once, in the East Village, in a 45-minute capsule version.

JJ: So Queen Amarantha is a "Bernhardt" play?

CB: This really was my first attempt at creating a Bernhardt/Sardou role. You know, Bernhardt played like 30 different male roles, more as she got older, because it was a way of not having to be quite so appealing.

JJ: Enzo Bordello is a big Soviero fan, and she's in her fifties now, but she still plays characters like Butterfly who are 30 or more years younger. And he says that's the most beautiful part, that convention.

CB: Oh, yeah . That's what I try to do, to play with that convention and have moments when the audience totally believes that I'm this beautiful woman. And then I can pull it back, and they know I'm a guy and that there's an ironic point of view, and then to take them back. In Queen Amarantha, I wasn't really in drag at all most of the time, since I was a woman dressed as a man, a very butch Hepburn-type lady striding around. It was fun to play these big operatic moments, patriotic speeches and swordfights. We had original music underscoring -melodrama, right? That's about as close to opera as I'm going to get.I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to really PLAY a 19^th century melodrama, and not have to pull back and spoof it? Could I use those theatrical conventions to say something about gender roles? This "parody actress" that I've been foisting on the public all these years, all these conventions I've been spoofing all these years, now I'm asking the audience to take the same conventions seriously. Amarantha had huge laughs, but it wasn't a spoof of the genre. I actually wrote one act as a broad, campy parody, and it was funny. But I thought it was such a rich idea, a drag actor playing a woman who's conflicted about her gender and dresses as a man. I suppose it could have been done satirically and still made its point, but I wanted to play scenes full-out, without apology. I wanted to take the next step. A lot of people liked it, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I was very proud of the play.

JJ: But maybe that's just not the play the audience wanted to see.

CB: If I saw "Charles Busch in Queen Amarantha with Ruth Williamson. He plays the queen of a ficitional kingdom who dresses as a man", I'd expect this to be a campy hoot. I tried to make it known in the press release that this was something different. We didn't call it a comedy, because we didn't want to mislead them. The reviews seemed to be, "why would he NOT spoof something that is so ripe for parody" or else they thought it was meant to be a spoof and misfired. That really hurts - if I do a spoof, you'll know it! But that was not my intention.

JJ: You really do have a lot of the rewards of being a diva.

CB: These strange moments happen to all of us who have a career in drag, where the line between your fantasy and how you're treated in real life just disappears. Lypsinka, whose image is being this faux-fashion model, has done runway modeling for Thierry Mugler. And I was invited as this parody grande-dame to speak at this luncheon with ladies of the American theater, and so there I am with June Havoc and Elaine Stritch discussing women in the theater today. They take you at face value. I did this AIDS benefit called Gypsy of the Year, and they put me in a dressing room with Carol Channing, Carol Burnett and Phyllis Newman We're sitting there combing out our wigs, and took a while for me to realize -- what's wrong with this picture? I should be next door with Nathan Lane and Patrick Stewart - especially Patrick Stewart! The identification is so close: here I am dressing with the actresses I emulate. Becoming them, really. They've all had this struggle, and I am beginning to think of myself as the Joan Crawford of drag, the glamour girl determined to prove she's a great actress. I think in my next play I should be a lesbian with breast cancer. That would finally show them all that I am a SERIOUS actress!

JJ: But still a white dress.

CB: Cardigan sweaters, I think. But, yes, of course, even the lesbian play would be a vehicle for me. So many of my plays have really been about, "Wouldn't it be fun to be Norma Shearer in an anti-Nazi melodrama? Wouldn't it be fun to be Barbara Stanwyck in a Capra Christmas story?"

JJ: You're very out.

CB: Yes.

JJ: That's something not all actors feel the freedom to be.

CB: That's a sad fact, but it's true. I mean, Ian McKellan, who never plays star roles, or rather roles with sex appeal, he doesn't have a problem. But the assholes who hire actors are awful, and the worst ones are gay. These showbiz gatekeeper are going to get in the way of an actor: "he's gay, no one will buy him as a romantic lead." It's really sad. The self-hatred that goes on! Any group that's not totally accepted is going to suffer a degree of self-hatred. If you're brought up to believe that you don't belong, that you're invisible, you're going to have problems no matter how well-adjusted you think you are. I'll suddenly find myself saying something like "He's a real man" and I realize I'm not as cool as I thought I was.

JJ: How is being out connected with creativity?

CB: There's a very definite connection between being at ease with who I am sexually and who I am theatrically. I was already sort of gay when I went to college, but my roomate and I both really came out together and we were these wild queens on campus, really notorious. I was so taken with the joy of being gay, of expressing myself and being outrageous, that playing some straight person in an acting class just didn't interest me. I was still discovering who I was, and I had no interest in discovering anyone else. But I did find a connection in improvising with my friends that these female roles from old movies came so easily to me. At the moment, I couldn't quite understand how you had a career doing THAT. But after I saw Charles Ludlam and some others, I realized that theater could be whatever I choose it to be. For the first six years I did these one-man shows, but with this very complex narrative where I had to play all the characters. First I'd be the young man searching for the truth about his mother, and he goes to see the mysterious countess…and I'd be all of them. But I knew in my heart that these male characters I had to play just didn't interest me. I HATED to play the old Irish fisherman, the Barry Fitzgerald part. I was more at home as Maureen O'Hara. Eventually I got a little theater company at the Limbo Lounge, and I thought, thank God I don't have to play these dreary roles any more. Surprisingly, in the last few years I've actually had something to say as a writer. Now, that's a problem, because the writer in me wants the play to be good, and the actor just wants it to be about ME. I did You Should Be So Lucky a couple years ago, and my character, who started off as a very flamboyant gay boy, became more recessive, and the play ended up about the other boy. I realized that I write better female roles, and the women in the cast were walking away with the show. So the actor in me said, "Goddamn it, I've got to rewrite this play so I can be Lucy!" I finally had to play it as written, but I hated being second fiddle. From now on, I guess I'm the star lady.

JJ: There are so few plays where you get that any more: "Here comes the star lady!"

CB: Bernhardt performances were filled with these tour-de-force moments completely unrelated to the plot or the character. Like she'd be doing an exposition scene and meanwhile arranging flowers, talking out front and then walking away, and the audience would gasp, because she would make the most perfect arrangement ever. And now, we're not living in a flamboyant age. Actresses want to play Norma Desmond, but they don't want to be her. Faye Dunaway and Kathleen Turner are ridiculed for being outrageous, and it's our loss. You have to have a touch of madness!