About the Play:

The Third Story is a full-length comedy by Charles Busch. Gangster flicks, fairy tales and B-movie sci-fi collide in The Third Story, an epic comic fable from the sick and silly imagination of the legendary Charles Busch, the genius campmeister who has been called "a first-class satirist and farceur" (The New Yorker).

The Third Story is an uplifting and very funny play that is composed of three interconnected stories. The year is 1949. A screenwriter years past her prime is trying to persuade her adult son to come out of his self-imposed Hollywood exile and collaborate with her on a new script. The B-movie gangster melodrama in their imagination evolves into a science fiction fantasy and unfolds before us, involving a hard-boiled Mob empress, a beautiful but icy lady scientist and her failed and understandably bitter human cloning experiment. A third story is the Grimm-inspired fairy tale the screenwriter told her son as a child about a romantically-inclined but socially-inept princess who makes a diabolical pact with a terrifying but surprisingly vulnerable old witch. The fairy tale inspires the movie which inspires the mother and son screenwriters to mend their fractured relationship. The Third Story is inspired by Charles Busch's life-long interest in film history.

The Third Story premiered in 2008 at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California and was then produced in New York by MCC Theatre at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2009.

Cast: 2 female, 4 male

What people say:

"Ingenious! Laugh-packed! The Third Story proves a treat and throbs with heart as well." — Hartford Courant

"Plays-within-plays require such intricate tailoring. So it's a pleasure to report that with The Third Story, the ever-captivating Charles Busch proves equally deft as both performer and seamstress." — Theatermania

"The main joy of The Third Story is that its foolery embodies something substantive...No wonder The Third Story feels like such an energizing event." — Village Voice

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.