I spent three years researching American Rose, research that included connecting with Gypsy's sister, the late actress June Havoc (I was the last person to interview her) and Gypsy's son, and also spending countless hours immersed in Gypsy's expansive archives at the New York Public Library. I became obsessed with figuring out the person behind the persona.

Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism.

A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy [Rose Lee] understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very human and eternal instinct to always want most what we'll never have.

One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship.

An amusing city, Chicago, any way you look at it. I'm afraid we are in for the time of our lives.

There is nudity, of course striptease is an essential component of burlesque but it's much more complex and intelligent than a display of nudity for nudity itself. And its often laugh-out-loud funny.

Classic burlesque in the style of Gypsy which many modern burlesque troupes practice is, at its core, so playful and teasing and innocent. It's not hardcore stripping so much as letting your body tell a story; the women are playing characters and unfolding a complete narrative onstage, with beginning, middle, and end.