'Doyenne of Downtown Culture' Nora Burns Looks Back at the 1980s with Two Plays

Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Nora Burns had one goal in life – to become a New Yorker. Sixty-two years later, Ms. Burns is not only a New Yorker, but has been called a "doyenne of downtown culture." The writer, performer, comic, actress is a founding member of the comic groups the Nellie Olesons and Unitard, which is still performing 25 years later.

She has performed in the comedy festivals Just for Laughs in Montreal, We're Funny That Way in Toronto, and the Aspen Comedy Festival (now HBO). Her most recent show, based on her (not such a) hit cable access show on the Gay Cable Network, "Candied Camera LIVE!" had a sold out run at La MaMa earlier this year.

The lover of all things disco is bringing back by popular demand two critically acclaimed queer-themed plays, "The Village! A Disco Daydream" and "David's Friend," to the SoHo Playhouse where they will be performed in repertory from July 10 to August 10.

"The Village" is her interpretation of her all-time favorite play, Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," if Wilder had lived on Christopher Street in 1979. "David's Friend," is the story of a forever friendship formed during the crazy days of the 1980s in New York City. Both are set to a disco beat and contain some of her favorite people, stories and experiences of life during that wild, tumultuous time.

EDGE recently chatted with Nora about her love of disco, how "David's Friend" came to be, and her 1980s cable show.

EDGE: You're from Cambridge?

Nora Burns: Yes, I am. I even talk about it in "David's Friend" because I met my best friend David in Boston. He's from Lexington, so it starts in Boston in the '70s.

EDGE: You came to New York in 1979. Why?

Nora Burns: I talk about that in my show too. I was just obsessed with New York. I couldn't wait to get there. In my high school yearbook photos there would be me on the camping trip holding a sign saying only 240 miles to the Big Apple. I couldn't wait to get out and get to NY.

EDGE: What did you do when you got here?

Nora Burns: I just wanted to move here so I applied to colleges here. It was easy to get in back then. I don't think I would get in now. I went to college originally, but I really went to Studio 54. I got kicked out of college for a year then realized it's easier to be in school for a little bit longer, so I went back. I just lived here like that was my profession, being a New Yorker.

EDGE: What was Studio 54 like back then?

Nora Burns: Amazing. It was great. I was a nightlife fiend back then. Studio was just one of many stops. You would go to five or six places each night. You'd go to one place then off to the next. I love to dance so I would just go and hit the dance floor. It was a pretty amazing time.

EDGE: How did you end up doing comedy?

Nora Burns: I had always done comedy. When I was little my best friend and I were obsessed with "The Carol Burnett Show" and we would reenact all the skits for my parents. I had always done comedy in high school then I got here and did nightlife and thought I wanted to do theater. I went on two auditions and it was awful. If that's what acting was, I didn't want to do it.

In the late '80s I saw this sign at the gay and lesbian center for some gay comedy group called Planet Q so I auditioned and got in. All of a sudden I knew this is what I love doing; writing and performing comedy with people who have the same sensibility as I do. That's where I met this guy Terrence Michael. Planet Q fired the only two people we liked so Terrence and I quit and formed the Nellie Olesons with them. They quit and went on to do other things so we brought in this other guy, John Cantwell, who was Love Connie on "RuPaul's Drag Race." The three of us had the same sensibility. We would write and do all these crazy sketches and we did the Montreal Comedy Festival, We're Funny That Way!, tons of shows in LA and we'd spend the summers in Ptown. It was so much fun, we were like a little fun family.

EDGE: Were you earning your living doing that?

Nora Burns: Between that and the fact that my rent was $200. I was very lucky with apartments. I wrote for Time Out magazine and I would do weird random gigs to earn $200. It was never a struggle. So, yeah, I did. It wouldn't be anyone else's living, trust me. But it was fun.

Terrence and John moved to LA so I decided I wanted to do more stuff in New York. That's when I asked Mike Albo if he wanted to do a show with me. I had this other friend David Ilku who had a group the Dueling Bankheads with his friend Clark. He's a comedian and brilliant improver so I said why don't all three of us do stuff together and we formed Unitard. We've been performing for 25 years now, doing places like Joe's Pub and Ptown. We still perform. We just did a show upstate a couple weeks ago.

EDGE: Do you standup?

Nora Burns: No. I love doing characters. I love being horrible people. I'm never going to be one of those 'where are you from' comics and I also don't want my shows to be that self-indulgence kind of performance. What's interesting about that? We all think we're fascinating. It's got to be funny, relatable, universal. When I hear one-person show, I'm, 'Ahhh.' When I talk about "David's Friend," I fear people are going to say, 'Oh God she's gonna be talking about her friend who died of AIDS.' No. It's so not like that. About ten years ago, I wrote a solo show that was just me doing a show. It was good, it was fun, very general. After that I got the idea for "David's Friend," which is also a solo show, but it's about the thing.

EDGE: Let's talk about it "David's Friend."

Nora Burns: It came organically about 7 or 8 years ago. My best friend, David, died of AIDS in '93. I was devastated. So many of my friends died. I'm 62. I've been in New York since '79. Half of my old friends have died. But you know you're young, you're moving on, you're busy doing stuff. I was doing the Olesons. It was terrible but I kept going. David had been such a huge part of who I am, my youth. He was definitely someone who was supposed to be part of my life forever.

About twenty years after he died I posted his picture on Facebook and I completely lost it. All of this emotion came up and I couldn't stop. I had to do something with it, and I thought okay I write shows and I write comedy so I'll do something but it's not going to be a memorial. We already did one twenty years ago. No one needs a memorial. I just did the show one night, but I thought there was more to it. So I started working on it with my friend Adrienne Truscott, who is an amazing director and performer. She totally got what I was saying. It couldn't be self-indulgent. It couldn't be my story. It's got to be faster, funnier, relatable, interesting. There had to be a reason I was doing it, not that I need to talk about my friend.

After workshopping it for more than a year, I did it at La MaMa. I had tested it in places like Toronto because it's also a love letter to New York, but can't be just for people who are 62. It got a really good review in The Times and was sold out. They were closing for renovations. I was drained from doing it. It really is an emotional show, I can't do it without crying, so I put it on the shelf.

In 2020 some friends of mine in LA said they wanted to film the show. I went out there on March 3, 2020 and everything shut down. We have a really good film of it and played a few gay festivals, virtually of course, and it did well. In the meantime I wrote this other show that's kind of related. Everything I do is kind of related; 1979, disco, hustlers, junkies, drag queens.

EDGE: The Village! A Disco Daydream?

Nora Burns: Disco is my favorite music in the whole wide world. I still listen to the exact same music that I have listened to for 45 years. That show kind of developed. It was supposed to go up in 2020 but it got dashed. I decided to do it in 2023 and Ellie Covan said to do it at Dixon Place. We had three sold runs of it.

It's set in the Village in 1979 and is based on "Our Town" which is my favorite play in the world.
It's actually "Our Town" if it were in the Village in 1979. It's about a hustler living with his john and his new boyfriend and his friends. There are gogo boys coming back and forth. It's very fun. I'm barely in The Village; It's got a cast of ten with dancing and choreography.

When I started working with "The Village," I asked my friend Adam Pivirotto to direct it. He blows me away. He needs to be the most sought-after director in New York. He's smart, funny, sensitive and he's so gentle and fun to work with. And he's technical. He just directed another show I did at La MaMa called "Candied Camera LIVE!" about this cable show I used to do at the Gay Cable Network.

Nora Burns: It was called the Gay Cable Network but it was really just this old leather queen, Lou Maletta, who had a camera and a loft in Chelsea that doubled as a sex club. During the day they would do their legit show "Gay USA" there. It was national gay news, early 80s kind of stuff. Lou came out of the closet later in life, probably in his 40s, and he went full on into gay world. What was fabulous about him was he brought his camera with him everywhere. He was filming the first ACT UP marches, the early Gay Pride Parades, City Hall meetings back in the 80s, but he was also filming Leather Fest, Mr. Leather New York and social things. He went everywhere in assless chaps and his leather cap. Lou was Lou. He was just a friend of mine from around.

I asked if I could do a cable show and he told me I could use the studio. They had a studio that had editing rooms because they edited porn videos all the time. It was all free. And he had all these slaves running around. I know you can't say slave now but back then that was really their names, Slave Dale, Slave Joe and stuff. They were the cameramen. I'd come in every week. I'd have a background and I'd interview people; drag queens, gogo boys, and I'd have crazy sketches I'd film.

I thought the shows were long gone because I never kept them. I'd do them and Lou would bring them to Manhattan Cable. I forgot all about them. I never saw them; I didn't keep them. Lou died about 15 years ago and his archives went to NYU because he recorded all these things. I ran into someone who used to do stuff there and she said you should go see if they still have your stuff in their archives. I called and they actually had some. It took a year for them to digitize what they had. My show was called "Candied Camera." I hosted the show as Candy. It's pretty unwatchable. Horrible for the most part, cringy.

When La MaMa reopened they asked me if I wanted to do a show there, so I thought maybe I can do a show about that old cable show. I asked Adam because he's so technical and he said sure. It's kind of like "The Comeback" meets "Spinal Tap" and I host it. We did this crazy show where we had 60-year-old gogo boys who pretended to have done the original show. Adam did a mockumentary where we had people like Marc Jacobs and Sandra Bernhard saying the show really changed their lives. The truth is it wasn't so popular back then. I think seven people actually saw it because you had to be up at 2am on a Tuesday. The show was fun. I might do it again in October.

EDGE: You certainly made it as a New Yorker. You've been called a "doyenne of downtown culture." If you could anything differently, what would that be?

Nora Burns: I think, I get choked up, I think I would have appreciated my friends more because you don't think you're ever going to lose them. I think that's what the show is and I think that's what "Our Town" is. Yeah, that's the thing I'd change.

"The Village! A Disco Daydream" and "David's Friend" run through August 10 at the Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, New York, New York. Tickets, which are $36 per show or a package of both for $60, are available at the the Soho Playhouse website