About the Play:

Psycho Beach Party has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male playing Female Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

Psycho Beach Party is a full-length comedy by Charles Busch, the genius campmeister who has been called "a first-class satirist and farceur" (The New Yorker). It's 1962 and Malibu teen Chicklet Forrest dreams of riding the big waves and she won't let anything stand in her way; not her mom, the local beach bums or a few split personalities! Charles Busch's gender bending camp classic parodies the 1960's Beach films of Annette Funicello and Sandra Dee and applies a few subversive twists!

Psycho Beach Party is a wickedly fun satire of classic Hollywood beach party epics such as Gidget, Muscle Beach Party and Beach Blanket Bingo. It follows Chicklet Forrest, a teenage tomboy who desperately wants to be part of the surf crowd on Malibu Beach in 1962. But her dangerous multiple personalities keep getting in her way. Among them is a black check out girl, an elderly radio talk show hostess, a male model named Steve and the accounting firm of Edelman and Edelman. Her most dangerous alter ego is a sexually voracious vixen named Ann Bowman who has nothing less than world domination on her mind. Psycho Beach Party is a comedy horror classic that brings to life the chaos that we all wanted to see erupt from an innocent Frankie and Annette summer movie.

Psycho Beach Party premiered in 1987 Off-Broadway at The Players Theatre in New York City. The play was previously presented under the title Gidget Goes Psychotic at the Limbo Lounge, an East Village storefront gallery and performance space. Psycho Beach Party gained cult status within the LGBTQ community after a film version was released in 2000. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 6 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Fiendishly funny! Zany." — Associated Press

"Charles Busch's Psycho Beach Party is a comic trash compactor of a play that takes an already silly genre – early 1960's surf and beach blanket movies – and sends it to camp heaven." — The New York Times

"Catch the wave of laughter." — Westchester Newspapers

"Hilarious." — Gannett Newspapers

About the Playwright:

Charles Busch is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He is the author of the award-winning Broadway play The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, and Our Leading Lady. He starred in such plays as The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, which ran for five years Off-Broadway. In 2003, Busch received a special Drama Desk award for career achievement as both a performer and a playwright.