Every night on Broadway right now, you have your choice of hearing some of the greatest dramatic texts ever written, by writers from Arthur Miller to August Wilson and even T.S. Eliot. Or, you could head to Celebrity Autobiography at the Shubert to take in a poignant passage by esteemed wordsmith Khloé Kardashian, recounting an emotionally wrought moment in her life in which a bout of depression ended up giving her a life-changing inspiration: to go to the gym.
That’s the kind of… fascinating… anecdote that makes perfect fodder for Celebrity Autobiography, the brainchild of Eugene Pack and Dayle Reyfel. When they started creating the play more than two decades ago, it was just Pack and Reyfel reading some choice passages from a celebrity memoir in the back of a Los Angeles bookstore. “We were just doing it for fun, to get beers afterwards,” Reyfel remembers. “Then one day, Steve Martin walked in with Eugene Levy, and we started adding celebrities to the show.” That kicked the show into another gear, taking it to all sorts of venues from Off-Broadway’s Triad Theatre to Sydney Opera House and, now, Broadway.
On any given night, the show might feature not only Pack and Reyfel but such notables as Andrea Martin, Nia Vardalos, Gayle King, Paula Abdul, or Bob Costas—each performance unique from the last. You might think those A-listers would be reticent to publicly make fun of their fellow famouses.
Think again, says Pack. “When they see it, they immediately get it, because it has nothing to do with mean-spiritedness. We aren’t making fun of people. We’re making fun of the idea that if you’re a celebrity, you should write a memoir and let us all know the way you stack your clothes up at night before work, or extensive details about what you eat at every restaurant.”
There’s a certain kind of memoir that works perfectly for the show, and it isn’t the kind that’s written with lots of care, let’s say. This team looks for books written about massively huge stars at the peak of their fame, when there does seem to be a certain rabid thirst for even the most insignificant details of their lives.
And in that way, who better to understand the full scope of that than actual celebrities, like Rita Wilson? The screen actor is a longtime fan of the show, and is both starring in and producing its current Broadway bow. “People are paying you a lot of money, and they want to hear what you have to say,” Wilson explains knowingly of how these curious tomes come to be. “It’s being ghost written, and somebody’s asking you about food, and that ends up in the book.”
That’s maybe why all involved say that, in all the years they’ve been doing Celebrity Autobiography, they’ve never heard from anyone angry about their books being read aloud. It’s hard to be mad, because everyone’s too busy cry-laughing.
As Wilson puts it: “When the truth is funnier than anything you can make up, that is one of the best forms of entertainment.”
These interviews were conducted before Celebrity Autobiography announced it would close on Broadway June 21.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source playbill.com ’
