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Camelot's Leading Lady
April 30, 2007

A veteran of such Broadway productions as Brigadoon, The Music Man and Damn Yankees, Meg Bussert conquered the New York musical theater stage and cable TV audiences around the country

when she starred as Guenevere in the Great White Way’s revival of Camelot opposite Richard Harris's King Arthur in 1981. The musical was recorded at New York’s Winter Garden Theater in ’82 and shown on HBO later that year. Camelot is now available on DVD from Acorn Media for a suggested retail price of $29.95.

“We all thought it was great fun—and having been on the show for a year at that point, there were no problems with shooting out of sequence or with the overall production,” Bussert told us in a recent interview. “What was an adjustment was having a camera in your face and having to adjust your twitches and tics.”

“Holding your head at a particular angle for a camera to capture is a challenge,” added Bussert, whose contribution to the DVD also includes production notes.

Another challenge was taping the show without a live audience.

“Taking the audience away was a curious thing,” Ms. Bussert remembered. “There are a couple of moments in the show where you’re used to a reaction bouncing back from the audience, and it was strange not to get that.”

When she’s not knockin’em dead on Broadway, Ms. Bussert teaches at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development in the Acting and Music Theater Studies Department. Her professorial work there focuses on teaching the art of acting to singers, but Ms. Bussert is also sure to talk to her students about other aspects performing arts industry and the all-to-real art of putting food on the table while trying to a gig.

“The artist is always the artist, but when I’m working with young artists, part of the thrust is in the advising them to see what they can do to support themselves as artists,” Bussert said. “There are a lot of ther aspects to the industry apart from just saying “’I wanna be in 'Wicked.’”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on April 30, 2007 | Comments (0)