‘The Gayest Gasp of All Time’

‘The Gayest Gasp of All Time’,The cast of Theater Camp — including Owen Thiele, Nathan Lee Graham, Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin, Patti Harrison, and Jimmy Tatro — discuss the roles they were born to play and the Broadway divas they’d body-swap.

‘The Gayest Gasp of All Time’

Hanging out with the cast of Theater Camp is an immersive theater experience in and of itself. An hour before the New York premiere of their movie at Dimes Square arthouse theater the Metrograph — which has been decked out in campcore for the occasion; there are pine cones, fake grass, and miniature bunk beds — the actors pile on top of each other for a photoshoot. Laughing and hugging and doing impromptu vocal riffs to The Idol soundtrack, they appear not unlike the hopelessly devoted theater-camp kids they portray in the film. The photographer describes his vision to them as, “Vanity Fair group portrait, but take the piss out of it.” Molly Gordon, who co-directs, co-writes, and stars in the film, ponders this concept as her co-star and co-writer Noah Galvin grabs her foot and holds it lovingly in his hands. “So like Breakfast Club, but fucked up,” she says, looking cheerfully down at Galvin. “I’m giving WikiFeet something really intense right now.”

Theater Camp is a mockumentary-style ode to this sort of hammy intimacy, which the cast has been developing on and offscreen for decades in various capacities: Gordon and co-star/co-writer Ben Platt have known and starred in theater productions with each other since childhood; Platt and Galvin met doing a web series with Gordon and her co-director, Nick Lieberman, and are now engaged. Shot like Waiting for Guffman and vibrating on the same frequency as Wet Hot American Summer, the movie is a love letter to the theater world that raised the actors, centered on the machinations of a ramshackle upstate summer camp run by a woman named Joan (Amy Sedaris). When Joan falls into a coma, her cryptobro son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro), takes over in an attempt to save the institution from being absorbed and destroyed by a seductive financier (Patti Harrison). To do so, he must earn the trust of its eccentric lifelong inhabitants, including codependent kooks and directors Rebecca-Diane (Gordon) and Amos (Platt), bitchy costumer Gigi (Owen Thiele), unassuming production manager Glenn (Galvin), melancholy dance teacher Clive (Nathan Lee Graham), a scammer named Janet who has zero stage experience but shows up to teach stage combat anyway (Ayo Edebiri), and a group of preternaturally talented little kids.

Post-fucked-up-Breakfast-Club photo shoot, Gordon, Platt, Galvin, Thiele, Graham, Lieberman, Harrison, and Tatro squeeze into a corner of the Metrograph’s upstairs bar to engage in a spirited, appropriately dramatic discussion of their love of the theater. Downstairs, their premiere audience awaits them, including the kind of theater people (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rapps both Anthony and Reneé, Sara Bareilles, Shoshanna Bean, etc.) whose mere presence would cause each of their Theater Camp characters to fall instantly into a coma.

So this group is sort of like Alice’s chart on The L Word where everyone has a million connections to each other. Can you please L Word Chart yourselves?Ben Platt: Molly and I met when we were 4 and 5 years old, doing theater at the Adderley School, playing opposite each other a bunch. We were best friends growing up in L.A. Owen and Molly met when they were what, 11?

Molly: 6 or 7.

BP: They grew up and went to Crossroads School together and their families are all close in L.A.

Noah Galvin: Molly and I met doing a workshop of a musical when we were 19. And we sort of fell in love and wrote a web series together that Nick directed. That’s when I met Nick. And we cast Ben as our weird roommate.

Nick Lieberman: Ben and I were really close since we were 13-14, did theater together in high school, and were always making things. He introduced me to Molly, and we’ve always been extremely close creative partners, twin souls. And then I developed and directed this web series.

BP: And that’s when I first met Noah.

MG: And they didn’t like each other. But secretly, there was something else going on.

Why didn’t you like each other?NG: We were will-they, won’t-they for a very long time.

BP: It was mostly my fault.

NL: I remember Noah seeing Ben come in, and Ben was doing The Book of Mormon, and Noah already had this angle of, “I gotta meet Ben.” I can still see a vision of Noah shoving me out of the way to go meet Ben. Which is so beautiful and sweet when you think, He’s going to meet his future husband. Shove me!

“My gay best friends here are the great loves of my life,” says Theater Camp costar Molly Gordon. “I love that the central relationship of our movie is that. It’s so profound and it pushes you forward. You don’t have to fuck everyone that pushes you forward. But I’ll still keep trying with you, Ben.”Photo: Tommy Agriodimas/

Broadway Diva you’d want to temporarily swap bodies with?BP: Kelli O’Hara.

NL: Bernadette Peters has an amazing body. Is that what you …?

NG: Audra McDonald. I want to feel what it feels like in my body to be able to sing that way.

MG: Brian d’Arcy James. I want to experience his grounded-father roles.

PH: I don’t really know anyone. Nicole Scherzinger. As Grizabella.

OT: Who’s that Broadway star I love? She starts with an S? Shoshanna Bean!

BP: She’s coming tonight!

OT: Oh my God, well, I’ll swap with her.

NLG: Does the person have to be alive? My dear friend and mentor Eartha Kitt. The control. To learn how to do nothing and do so much at the same time. That’s fucking amazing.

NG: Jimmy, I see an Elaine Stritch for you.

JT: I’m so happy you said that.

Marry, fuck, kill: singing, dancing, acting. OT: Kill dancing. Sorry.

BP: I’d marry acting, because you can do it no matter what state you’re in. I would fuck singing, because if it’s good it’s good and if not it’s torturous. And I would kill dancing.

BP: Would anybody not kill dancing?

OT: Patti would marry dancing.

PH: I don’t believe in marriage because it’s outdated and sexist. I don’t believe in sex because I’m Christian. And I don’t believe in killing because … I’m Christian.