INTERVIEW: Multi-hyphenate Michael Kushner is ready to celebrate Pride
Photo: Michael Kushner will offer a one-night-only concert at Feinstein’s / 54 Below. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by press team with permission.
Michael Kushner is a self-proclaimed and well-deserved multi-hyphenate. His résumé is notable for its breadth, encompassing writing, performing, podcasting, photographing and producing. This month he is putting many of these skills together for a special concert at Feinstein’s / 54 Below in Midtown Manhattan. Michael Kushner Sings His Hits for Pride will play the venerable cabaret venue June 30, and he’ll be joined on stage by Tony winner Alice Ripley.
“It is really exciting,” Kushner said in a recent phone interview. “I’m a multi-hyphenate photographer, producer, writer, performer and podcaster, and at 54 Below, I produce and photograph and perform there. So I do a bunch of different stuff there, and this is the first time that I’m doing my actual solo show. So it’s exciting because 54 Below is one of my artistic homes. I love it there, and I know every nook and cranny of that space. So it feels like I’m coming home, which is really exciting, and it’s very 1960s musical theater diva to say that. I love it. It feels like I’m home.”
Kushner has his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he says that he’ll be singing his “hits.” He is the first to admit that he doesn’t really have any hits, so most of the songs will be pulled from the catalog of musical theater. Kushner said audiences should expect something very vaudevillian, with equal parts singing and comedy.
“I’m opening up with ‘Springtime for Hitler,’ which is I think important,” he said. “The Producers is one of my favorite musicals of all time, and it serves a very, very specific purpose. As a gay Jew, I think opening up with the song is really important because we’re seeing a rise in anti-Semitism, and so I think being a gay Jew it’s a big F-U to those around me … that are causing harm to my communities and to people, to those that I love, to Black people, to trans people, to Asian people, to Jews, to everyone. I think opening up with that number is a sign of the times unfortunately, but brings levity to the situation.”
Having Ripley on stage will certainly be a highlight for the evening. Kushner has known the musical theater performer for three years, and he has always been a huge fan and admirer. Of course, Ripley is know for many Broadway shows, including Next to Normal and Side Show. Over the years, Kushner has taken her portrait and headshot, and they became friends and collaborators.
“A few weeks ago, we wrapped the first feature film that I had done, and she had starred in it,” Kushner said. “It’s the off-Broadway play The Pink Unicorn, which had two runs off-Broadway, produced by Out of the Box Theatrics, and then had a regional run, also produced by Out of the Box Theatrics and Holmdel Theatre Company. And I had seen it, and I was like, this should be a film. So the producers and I we met and planned it over the past year and a half, two years, and I was [one of the producers] and director of photography for this project. And Alice starred in it, and we filmed for about a week out in New Jersey. And we wrapped, and that was the biggest collaboration that Alice and I did together. It was incredible. I had such a great time. We made some great stuff. Then one night after we wrapped, we were singing and dancing and celebrating. I was singing, and she had danced around me. She looked at me and was like, ‘That was so fun. We have to do that in front of an audience.’ I was like, ‘Well, I think we can.’ So the first time I’d ever saw her perform was the out-of-town tryout of Little Shop of Horrors in Miami, and so I am asking her to do ‘Suddenly Seymour’ with me. … We’re going to do it with a little twist. It’s not going to be your typical ‘Suddenly Seymour.’ There’s going to be a surprise in there.”
Kushner has many credits to his name. He is the executive producer of the Emmy-nominated series Indoor Boys, and he has performed on stage in productions of On the Town, Much Ado About Nothing, Sons on the Prophet and Moo With Me, his one-man show. He also has two podcasts — Dear Multi-Hyphenate and My Broadway Memory — on the Broadway Podcast Network.
For this one-night-only concert at 54 Below, it’s important for Kushner to celebrate Pride, while at the same celebrating his Jewish identity. “I realized that my gayness actually has come out of my identity as a Jew,” he said. “I am an agnostic Jew. I’m not religious. I canceled my bar mitzvah for a thespian competition, but I love my culture. And my grandmother, she was camp growing up. She was a community theater actress in Douglaston, Queens, and moved down to Florida, and I grew up in Florida. She would sit there cross-legged with a cigarette in her hand and talk to me, regale me with the stories of her days in community theater as if she were Ethel Merman herself. I remember just being enamored and also just being surrounded by the movies she would show me and the theater performances she would show me.”
For Kushner, his identity is about culture, humor and love. “I think there’s a lot to celebrate,” he said. “And I think that’s why it’s important that it’s a Pride show.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Michael Kushner Sings His Hits for Pride will play Feinstein’s / 54 Below June 30 at 9:45 p.m. Click here for more information and tickets.
