Out on the town: Actor Tim Cusack’s East Village

Name: Tim Cusack, interviewed by GC New York editor JJ Keyes

Home: East Village

Occupation: actor/director/dancer/writer

Hails from: Scranton, PA (home of The Office!)

Relationship Status: Single, but really, REALLY interested in changing that

Favorite City: NYC, duh, but if I HAD to move somewhere else, Sydney, Australia

Spotted on a typical New York Friday night: The Cock—sleazy realness with regular guys looking for action. There’s also this private party in Gramercy that I’ve been known to show my, umm, face at, but I shouldn’t say more ‘cause this is a family publication, right?

Next Act: Theatre Askew’s Horatio’s RiseSat and Sun, Feb, 27, 28, 3:30 pm

JJK: Hey Tim. How long have you been living in the East Village?

TC: Gulp, 20 years. I moved here in utero. I was a very independent fetus.

JJK: What are the hottest bars in your ‘hood?

TC: Well, Le Coq, as I like to refer to it, on Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays is reliably packed. Monday nights at Urge is a blast—I was there this past Monday, and they’re doing a new audience-interactive game that’s sort of spin the bottle meets strip poker, hosted by Princess Paulina. All the mayhem is fueled by free shots at the bar—alcohol and public nudity, my kind of combo! Whichever contestant is the last one clothed wins $100. I was the first boy to get naked, so I didn’t walk away with the cash, but I did leave the bar with this total hottie. That’s what I call a “win-win” situation. Urge, by the way, has the longest happy hour in town—2 for 1 from 5 to 10 pm every night. Size does matter. Wednesdays at Eastern Bloc feature some of the best dance music in the hood by DJ Sparber, and weekends there always turn into a fun dance party with too-cool-for-school Billieburg boys and their gal pals cutting loose to Lady Gaga, with sexy bartenders Gabe and Darren tag-teaming as DJs! I know The Phoenix is really popular, but honestly I’ve never been able to warm up to that bar. And, of course, Beige at Bowery Bar on Tuesday nights has practically been going as long as I have, however I’ve always found it to be a little too snooty for an authentic EV vibe. For me Nowhere is THE quintessential East Side spot—mixed crowd, cheap drinks, relaxed atmosphere, pool table, and awesome music like world beat and obscure Motown, that you just won’t find in any other gay bar in the city.

JJK: I’m crazy about some of the food in your hood. I always find myself craving some Ukranian soul food at Veselka. In your opinion, what are some of the best restaurants nearby?

TC: I just had dinner last night at Café Mogador on St. Marks Place—I’ve been eating there ever since I moved into the neighborhood. The chicken couscous is just as delicious now (albeit a little pricier) as it was in the early 90s. So if you’re looking for great Moroccan in a fab boho atmosphere—that’s your best bet. Takahachi on Avenue A is my favorite Japanese joint in the nabe—their special udon made with salmon and fresh vegetables is to die for, leaving you satisfied but not feeling like you have to do 300 crunches the next day to make up for it. I’m addicted to the brunch at Clinton Street Baking (technically the Lower East Side but what’s a little cheating among friends?), however you WILL need to do an extra 300 sit-ups after a morning spent there. And I have five of the best Italian restaurants in the entire city within a two-block radius of my apartment—Supper and Il Bagatto (with its sister wine bar Il Posto Acconto) on East Second, Max on Avenue B, and Perbacco on East Fourth. If I could, I would just rotate among all of them for dinner during the week. Only thing—if you’re going to Supper or Perbacco, bring plenty of cash. Neither accepts plastic. And, I hear you about Veselka—after a little avant garde theatre at PS 122 or the Ontological at St. Marks–I too crave meat pirogis with a side of potato pancake.

JJK: I can’t believe how much the East Village has changed since I moved to the city. What have been some good things about the recent evolution of the East Village?

TC: Well, I remember when I would be coming home from the Roxy on a Sunday morning, and the junkies would be lined up on the street waiting to get into the shooting gallery on East Second Street (where Il Bagatto is now). And Second Street was actually one of the safer ones to walk down! There were whole blocks, like Eleventh Street between Avenues A and C, which were suicidal to enter. So, the fact that there isn’t a single unsafe area left in the entire neighborhood is truly remarkable. Not that things still don’t happen—a friend of mine (straight guy) who lives on Fifth and C was mugged last year while walking home after midnight during the week, but it’s nowhere near as dangerous as it was even 10 years ago. Tompkins Square Park used to be downright scary, and now after its renovation in the late 90s, it’s truly one of the prettiest spots in all of Manhattan to hang out in on a warm summer day—with the shirtless eye candy just adding to the ambience. And speaking of pretty spots, the East Village has the best community gardens in the entire city. In the late 90s, we were in danger of losing them to developers, but Bette Midler stepped in with her foundation and brokered a deal with the city that put all of the gardens under the Green Thumb program. As a result, most of the gardens are now considered to be part of the Parks Department, and are eligible for city grant money. They’ve all been upgraded in the past few years with new plantings, picnic benches, barbecue pits, etc, and most are open to the public on weekends. They’re a really great spot to chill with some friends, a few bottles of wine, and takeout from Mama’s Food Shop on East Third Street. Oh, and banks. Back in the day there was only one bank branch in all of Alphabet City—I used to have to walk all the way to First Avenue and Fifteenth Street just to deposit a check or withdraw cash. Having lots of bank machines is a really great change.

JJK: Change isn’t always good. We’ve recently lost some great gay landmarks like The Hose. Places like this seem like they’ll be around forever. Some of the East Village bars and venues seem to have changed going out for a whole generation of gay men.

TC: Child, please, The Hose was not a landmark spot. That bitch was in business for less than a year. Boiler Room—THAT’S a landmark and going stronger than ever. I think its been open for something like 18 years. And with the economic downturn, it’s enjoying quite a renaissance. After all, you can’t go wrong with $3.50 well drinks. (Except for the attendant alcohol poisoning of course.) On the culture front, the neighborhood has always been incredibly important in the history of queer theatre. Institutions like La MaMa (where Harvey Fierstein got his start), PS 122 (co-founded by gay performance artist Tim Miller), and New York Theatre Workshop (birthplace of Rent) are an affordable way to get some cutting-edge culture, and then maybe pick up a cast member later in the evening around the corner at The Cock (yes, all roads seem to lead to The Cock). But the Mother of the House of Everything East Village is The Pyramid Club. Sadly, it’s now mostly straight (except for Chip Duckett’s indestructible 80s-nostalgia Friday night binge, 1984), but back in the day, it was genius—and filled with geniuses. I’m talking Madonna, Debbie Harry, Ru Paul, Lady Bunny, Ethyl Eichelberger, Anne Bogart, Antony Hegarty, Linda Simpson, Justin Bond, John Jesurun, Ann Magnuson, Jeff Weiss, John Kelly, etc, etc, etc. Everybody who was anybody in the Downtown scene of the 80s and early 90s appeared on the stage of the Pyramid. There just isn’t anything like it anymore. Where else could you go to get wasted, dance your ass off, see brilliant performances, and then get laid? God, I miss it so!

JJK: I’ve been hearing wonderful things about your theatre company, Theatre Askew. I feel fortunate to have been a part of your inaugural production, Bald Diva!, which played the Red Room in the Winter of 2004. We know Theatre Askew is New York’s Premiere Producer of Queer Theatre. When did you team up with Jason and how did you start Theatre Askew?

TC: Actually Jason Jacobs and I met because of Tim Miller, who was offering a free performance workshop for gay men at PS 122. I heard about it through a woman I was volunteering with on the gay pride committee. She phoned me out of the blue one day—this is a true story—and left a message on my answering machine that she thought I should check out the workshop. What’s weird is that this was the one and only time this particular person had ever called me! So, I guess meeting Jason was somehow fated. Anyway, I went and we became instant friends. We did some work on shows for each other, and then when Jason was studying directing with Anne Bogart at Columbia, she assigned her students the French absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco for their second-year projects. Jason decided to adapt Ionesco’s first play The Bald Soprano as a satire on the whole Chelsea boy cult of fabulousness, and the playwright David Koteles, a classmate of Jason’s, wrote the role of Tim Jackson-Smith with me in mind. The night we presented the workshop version at Columbia, I thought the audience was going to need CPR they were laughing so hard. Anne literally came running backstage and grabbed me and was like, “You and Jason have got to do this Downtown. It will be a huge success.” So that’s when we decided to start the company. We premiered the final version of Bald Diva! in, surprise, surprise, the East Village! And it WAS a huge success—best of tyear lists, GLAAD media award nomination, publication in an anthology. So it was an incredible start. We were very fortunate.

JJK: I’m amazed at the way you guys develop new shows. Cornbury, The Queens Governor was incredible. Tell us about some of your recent productions.

TC: We’re about to go into workshops for a brand-new piece about the Victorian writer Horatio Alger. You know, the “rags-to-riches” guy? Well, it turns out Alger was a bit of a pedophile, who liked to hang out with the newspaper and shoeshine boys whom he wrote about. And since it was common knowledge at the time that for a few extra dollars, some newsboys would “deliver” more than a gentlemen’s evening paper, I think your readers can do the math about what might have been really going on. We’re taking Alger’s most successful novel, Ragged Dick (you can’t make this stuff up), and adapting it to the stage, but we’re also going to intersperse episodes from his life into the evening. We’re not sure exactly what the final form the performance will take, but that’s part of the journey. I’m a huge acolyte of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, which ultimately ended up in the West Village but which started in the 60s and 70s in the East Village. One of my goals is to continue his tradition of, for lack of a better term, “intellectual camp.” Ragged Dick is an absolute scream to modern sensibilities—especially once you know the back-story—because the events in it are over-the-top melodrama and every man who meets young Dick falls head over heels in love with him. So we totally want to indulge in the fun of that, but we also want to ask serious questions about capitalism and our community’s obsession with youth and how the hell this NAMBLA fantasy became embedded within the self-help mythos at the center of American culture.

JJK: Hey, we’re all huge fans of TAYPE, the Theatre Askew Youth Performance Experience, which is an educational theatre program for queer youth. You guys are the recipient of a huge Mukti Fund grant.

 TC: When Jason and I formed the company, it was really important to us that we incorporate an educational component for LGBTQ youth into our core mission. No theatre company in New York City was offering a program specifically tailored like ours to this specific population—unlike in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. There was a real need and decided to step in and close this services gap. The first few years were fairly stop and start, but this year we were contacted by Mike Dively from the Mukti Fund, who lives in Key West. He had found out about us on the Internet, and we were invited to submit a proposal—one of several LGBT companies to do so from across the country. They funded our entire request–$15,000, the largest single grant we’ve ever received. This money has finally enabled us to launch the program that we’ve always envisioned. We commissioned the lesbian playwright Winter Miller, who’s had extensive experience creating original work with young people, to write the piece. We started with ten amazing kids, and now we’re down to eight. This past fall, Winter gave them writing assignments, and Jason and I led them in improvisations and physical composition work. Sometimes we just sat around and talked about their experiences. The piece is going to be about home. Many of these kids come from really rough backgrounds—not the shiny affluent gay lives the media likes to present as typical of our community. Some have been homeless, some have had to move in with relatives, some have been in group homes, some have been in foster care. They all have these incredible stories of survival and resilience. Right now, Winter is hard at work on the play, and we’ll all reconvene in the spring, with the premiere happening the last week of May at the Hudson Guild Theatre.

 JJK: What are your hopes for the future of Theatre Askew and TAYPE?

 TC: To be self-sustaining—I’d really love to be able to quit my day job! An OBIE would be nice, too, someday. Let’s face it: Downtown theatre ain’t ever going to make you rich, so to leave behind a respected body of work that’s studied by students of theatre and a company that could continue without me would make for a satisfactory legacy. I’d gladly shuffle off this mortal coil with no regrets then.

JJK: How about shopping? There are so many cute and funky boutiques down there, I never know which one to go into. Do you have any favorite shops?

TC: I’m in theatre, remember? I don’t have any money to go shopping. But if I did have money, I would say Odin on East Eleventh Street. They stock fabulous basics that aren’t boring. For jeans, I only shop at Atrium on Broadway and Bleecker. For skinny boys like me, it’s the best bet that they’ll have something in my size.

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