--- description: In conversation with the artist whose life story has become a Broadway sensation title: Alison Bechdel New Book: Fun Home the Broadway Musical image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt61b46cad4d65d261/6987ed8ce53aba0b214db94a/alison-bechdel.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Alison Bechdel on _Fun Home_, Her New Book and That Famous Test  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 30, 2015 1:30 PM CUT  Alison Bechdel at a rehearsal for the musical Fun Home on April 21, 2014 in Charleston, SC. Alison Bechdel at a rehearsal for the musical Fun Home on April 21, 2014 in Charleston, SC.Alice Keeney—The Washington Post/Getty Images  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 30, 2015 1:30 PM CUT Alison Bechdel has been making comics for decades. But the artist has achieved her highest level of public attention to date for a very different kind of project. The recently-opened musical _Fun Home_, which received a field-leading 12 Tony nominations this week, is based upon Bechdel’s 2006 graphic memoir. The show, like the book, depicts Bechdel’s upbringing in a Pennsylvania funeral home, under the parenting of a repressed mother and a closeted gay father, and shows Bechdel’s childhood, coming-of-age in college and struggles to reckon with it all as an adult. It’s a moving portrait of a dysfunctional family, one that maintains the mordant tone of Bechdel’s book while expanding boundlessly outward into physical space. Bechdel, who is at work on a new memoir, spoke to TIME from her home in Vermont on the day the Tony nominations were handed out. **TIME: Did the personal nature of this project make it difficult for you to allow another artist to adapt it?** **Alison Bechdel:** I approach this whole thing with a mixture of naivete and trust—trust that turned out to be well-founded. I had no real reason to think it would. I feel really lucky. **Did you know, or care, much about theater before this experience?** I came from a theatrical family, but I never took a passionate interest in it. That was part of why I signed on for this. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. It was clear this was a completely different medium. If it was film, I might have have been more territorial. **Do you feel as though you’re watching your own life experience onstage, or experiencing it at a sort of aesthetic remove?** I expected to feel a remove, and I expected to feel a remove from the story. My first exposure was listening to the score on a CD. I was devastated. I’ve watched it evolve over the years and there have been moments when I felt it wasn’t clicking and many when it was. On the whole, I feel like it’s incredibly faithful to my story. Even objectively, it’s an amazing adaptation. It captures the essence of my book. What \[playwright\] Lisa \[Kron\] and \[composer\] Jeanine \[Tesori\] did was they took my book all apart, found the things that made it work and put it all back together somehow. **Did you worry in moments it wasn’t clicking that you’d made a mistake?** The first time I saw it in a workshop at the Public Theater—or a reading—I’m such a theatrical idiot, I can’t keep these straight—the first time with actors reading and singing was really good. Because I’d seen it stronger, I had faith that it would get back there, because the first experience was so positive. **Your published work has dealt with various stages of your life, but I think fans of yours might be interested in learning more about your life today. Do you have interest in writing along those lines in the future?** It kind of does interest me! I’m working on a memoir right now ostensibly about physical fitness and the body. It will be about my life in the recent past. I think it’s going to touch on some strange stuff happening in my career. I shouldn’t really talk about that; I’m talking and not writing. **There are three actresses playing you on Broadway at present. Do you see a throughline when looking back at your past selves, or as though it’s a series of skins you’ve shed?** I see the connection very clearly. That’s what’s so interesting to me about seeing the play is seeing all of the selves on stage at once. I feel like I still am that 10-year-old and that 20-year-old. **How do you feel about the “Bechdel test,” and the fact that people who may have no familiarity with your work are so closely acquainted with a tossed-off line from one of your older comics?** The Bechdel test is kind of strange. It’s funny—the students I run into don’t know my comics but recognize me because of that test. It’s an odd thing: I can’t get too excited about it for some reason. My agent tried to get me to do a book about it, but I’m just not interested enough in the test or in movies to do anything with it. I don’t feel like it’s really mine. I probably watch as many movies as anybody. **Does being in the public eye to the degree that you are allow you to live more honestly, or place restraints on your life and work?** On a very practical level, all this stuff is so time-consuming—doing so much publicity and going to New York, so I don’t get time to work. Spending time being a famous person, I’m not generating much biographical material. It’s not a story anyone’s interested in. I really need to retreat a bit and get into a more contemplative mindset. **You’re not necessarily interested in theater, you said, but is there any connection between your family’s interest in theater and your interest in self-revelation and unburdening personal history?** I do think that my autobiographical comics are related to the acting and performing my parents were interested in. I feel like they were… I don’t think I would be writing about my family if I hadn’t been raised in a world where they prized art over life. I’m revealing lots of internal stuff about my family, and I might not do that if I felt more loyalty towards my family. I wasn’t raised like that. **But was the decision to give your work over to the theater inspired by a family interest in the medium?** I don’t think so. They were performing their lives apart from any acting my mother, in particular, did. That’s what inspired it—more than any love of theater. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3840307/alison-bechdel-on-fun-home-her-new-book-and-that-famous-test/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3840307/alison-bechdel-on-fun-home-her-new-book-and-that-famous-test/"},"headline":"Alison Bechdel on Fun Home, Her New Book and That Famous Test","datePublished":"2015-04-30T13:30:42.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T06:47:16.984Z","description":"In conversation with the artist whose life story has become a Broadway sensation","url":"https://time.com/3840307/alison-bechdel-on-fun-home-her-new-book-and-that-famous-test/","keywords":["broadway","Theater"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt61b46cad4d65d261/6987ed8ce53aba0b214db94a/alison-bechdel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt61b46cad4d65d261/6987ed8ce53aba0b214db94a/alison-bechdel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"\"Fun Home \" demonstration at College of Charleston","caption":"\"Fun Home \" demonstration at College of Charleston","creditText":"Alice Keeney—The Washington Post/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3840307/alison-bechdel-on-fun-home-her-new-book-and-that-famous-test/","name":"Alison Bechdel on Fun Home, Her New Book and That Famous Test"}}]}] ```