In this new episode of “THEATER: All the Moving Parts”, host Patrick Pacheco talks with multi-Tony winner, writer and actor Harvey Fierstein about his revealing and passionate new memoir “I Was Better Last Night”.
The memoir recounts, and the interview explores, Harvey Fierstein as a bold innovator on the Broadway stage, breaking through with “Torch Song Trilogy,” in the early 1980s and going on to write “La Cage Aux Folles,” “Hairspray,” “Kinky Boots,” and “Newsies.” Fierstein maintains that he stumbled into writing, encouraged by East Village icon, Ellen Stewart of La MaMa Experimental Theatrical Club. A eureka moment came about when he wrote about what he considered a traumatic, if promiscuous, experience in the backroom of a gay bar. When he read it aloud to actress friend, Sherry Burke, she told him that it was funniest thing she’d ever heard. Says Fierstein in the course of the interview, “I just found a banana peel!” And with that, an ability to point out through humor the follies and foibles of the characters that have since poured out of his prolific talent.
Fierstein takes the viewers on a journey through colorful moments of his life and career, including the times he made Stephen Sondheim cry; his ordeal working with the famed and caustic playwright and director Arthur Laurents; the crushing impact of the AIDS crisis which led to a heavy bout of alcoholism, and his thoughts on Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl”, for which he revised the libretto. A longtime activist, he chides the gay community for their internalized homophobia (“Nobody hates us like we hate ourselves”), even while he writes about it with understanding and compassion.
Says Pacheco, “I’ve always been fascinated by how adept Harvey has been in gauging an audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. While other writers might roll their eyes at scenes that appear to test the limits of logic, Harvey knows his public as well as he knows the power of the theatrical experience. He says of the audience, "They come for this experience. We just have to feed it to them. And if we don't, we have cheated them.”
Guest: Harvey Fierstein, Writer and Actor
Tape date: 08/11/2022 First date: 09/16/2022
On THEATER: All the Moving Parts, host Patrick Pacheco looks beyond the spotlight at the passionate and unheralded creative talents that are critical to the theatrical experience. From costumer designers to dramaturges and everything in between, Patrick looks at all the moving parts of a Broadway production.
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