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The Complete Plays
Briefly traces the playwright's life, and presents all twenty-nine of his plays, which combined farce, melodrama, and satire
905 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
Charles Ludlam
24 books2 followersCharles Braun Ludlam was an American actor, director, and playwright.
Ludlam joined John Vaccaro's Play-House of the Ridiculous, and after a falling out, became founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York City in 1967. His first plays were inchoate exercises: however, starting with Bluebeard he began to write more structured works, which, though they were pastiches of gothic novels, Lorca, Shakespeare, Wagner, popular culture, old movies, and anything else that might get a laugh, had more serious import.
Theater critic Brendan Gill after seeing one of Ludlam's plays famously remarked, "This isn't farce. This isn't absurd. This is absolutely ridiculous!".
Yet on his own work Ludlam had commented: "I would say that my work falls into the classical tradition of comedy. Over the years there have been certain traditional approaches to comedy. As a modern artist you have to advance the tradition. I want to work within the tradition so that I don’t waste my time trying to establish new conventions. You can be very original within the established conventions."
Ludlam usually appeared in his plays (particularly noted for his female roles), and had written one of the first plays to deal (though tangentially) with HIV infection. He taught or staged productions at New York University, Connecticut College for Women, Yale University, and Carnegie Mellon University. He won fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. He won six Obie Awards, the last one 2 weeks before his death, and won the Rosamund Gilder Award for distinguished achievement in the theater in 1986. His most popular play, and the only one to enter the standard repertory, is The Mystery of Irma Vep, in which two actors manage, through a variety of quick-change techniques, to play seven roles in a send-up of gothic horror novels. The original production featuring Ludlam and his lover Everett Quinton was a tour de force. In order to ensure cross-dressing, rights to perform the play include a stipulation that the actors must be of the same sex. In 1991, Irma Vep was the most produced play in the United States; and in 2003, it became the longest-running play ever produced in Brazil.
Ludlam was diagnosed with AIDS in March 1987. He attempted to fight the disease by putting his lifelong interest in health foods and macrobiotic diet to use. He died a month later of PCP pneumonia in St. Vincent's Hospital, New York. The street in front of his theatre in Sheridan Square was renamed "Charles Ludlam Lane" in his honor.
In 2009, Ludlam was inducted posthumously into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. After his death, "Walter Ego", the ironically named dummy character from Ludlam's play "The Ventriloquist's Wife" was donated to the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where it remains on exhibit today; the puppet was designed and built by actor and noted puppetmaker Alan Semok.
Ludlam joined John Vaccaro's Play-House of the Ridiculous, and after a falling out, became founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York City in 1967. His first plays were inchoate exercises: however, starting with Bluebeard he began to write more structured works, which, though they were pastiches of gothic novels, Lorca, Shakespeare, Wagner, popular culture, old movies, and anything else that might get a laugh, had more serious import.
Theater critic Brendan Gill after seeing one of Ludlam's plays famously remarked, "This isn't farce. This isn't absurd. This is absolutely ridiculous!".
Yet on his own work Ludlam had commented: "I would say that my work falls into the classical tradition of comedy. Over the years there have been certain traditional approaches to comedy. As a modern artist you have to advance the tradition. I want to work within the tradition so that I don’t waste my time trying to establish new conventions. You can be very original within the established conventions."
Ludlam usually appeared in his plays (particularly noted for his female roles), and had written one of the first plays to deal (though tangentially) with HIV infection. He taught or staged productions at New York University, Connecticut College for Women, Yale University, and Carnegie Mellon University. He won fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. He won six Obie Awards, the last one 2 weeks before his death, and won the Rosamund Gilder Award for distinguished achievement in the theater in 1986. His most popular play, and the only one to enter the standard repertory, is The Mystery of Irma Vep, in which two actors manage, through a variety of quick-change techniques, to play seven roles in a send-up of gothic horror novels. The original production featuring Ludlam and his lover Everett Quinton was a tour de force. In order to ensure cross-dressing, rights to perform the play include a stipulation that the actors must be of the same sex. In 1991, Irma Vep was the most produced play in the United States; and in 2003, it became the longest-running play ever produced in Brazil.
Ludlam was diagnosed with AIDS in March 1987. He attempted to fight the disease by putting his lifelong interest in health foods and macrobiotic diet to use. He died a month later of PCP pneumonia in St. Vincent's Hospital, New York. The street in front of his theatre in Sheridan Square was renamed "Charles Ludlam Lane" in his honor.
In 2009, Ludlam was inducted posthumously into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. After his death, "Walter Ego", the ironically named dummy character from Ludlam's play "The Ventriloquist's Wife" was donated to the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where it remains on exhibit today; the puppet was designed and built by actor and noted puppetmaker Alan Semok.
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January 28, 2023
review of
Charles Ludlam's The Complete Plays
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 8, 2023
For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL...
It took me something like 6 yrs to read this. For a large portion of the time that's b/c I had it sitting near my front door as the bk I'd read while sitting outside on my steps, waiting for food to be delivered & suchlike. But that's not really the only excuse I have. It's 905pp long.. & it's PLAYS. I've never liked reading plays that much. Still, I'm glad I finally made it thru it all, I'm sorry I've never seen any of them performed, I'll bet they're much more fun to witness in the flesh than they are as things to read. They're probably hilarious.
I 1st heard of Ludlam as one of the main progenitors of the Theater of the Ridiculous, something that I 1st became aware of thru the films made by Ronald Tavel in collaboration w/ Andy Warhol. I reviewed a bk relevant to those here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Alas, the complete review is no longer online b/c Goodreads removed the section where it was posted.
John Vaccaro is reputed to've been the 3rd person of prominence in the Ridiculous. According to a Wikipedia entry:
"Another perspective is that Ludlam's productions were too close to conventional comedy, while Vacarro's work was more challenging, emphasizing social commentary. Leee Black Childers was quoted in Legs McNeil's 1997 Please Kill Me:
"In my opinion, John Vaccaro was more important than Charles Ludlam, because Ludlam followed theatrical traditions and used a lot of drag. People felt very comfortable with Charles Ludlam. Everyone's attitude going to see Charles's plays was that they were going to see a really funny, irreverent, slapstick drag show. They never felt embarrassed.
"But John Vaccaro was way past that. Way, way past that. John Vaccaro was dangerous. John Vaccaro could be very embarrassing on many levels. He used thalidomide babies and Siamese triplets joined together at the asshole. One actor had this huge papier-mache prop of a big cock coming out of his shorts, down to his knees. He also couldn't control his bowel movements, so shit was dripping down his legs the whole time and everyone loved it. People loved this kind of visually confrontational theater." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre...
So, on the one hand we're told that Vaccaro was "dangerous" & "embarrassing on many levels" &, on the other hand, we're told that everyone "loved this kind of visually confrontational theater." To me, that seems somewhat contradictory. If the work were truly "dangerous" it seems more likely to me that people wd be scared & wd want to leave. Perhaps there was some envy of Ludlam as someone who was starting to break into Hollywood before he died.
As for Tavel, I reckon he was hoping that Warhol wd help usher him into stardom. Instead, Warhol's production values cd've hardly been lower & what content there was of note in Tavel's screenplays was largely destroyed by bad sound & fixed camera positions.
In a manifesto presented on p vii Ludlam writes:
"Aim: To get beyond nihilism by revaluing combat."
[..]
"1. You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low."
Steven Samuels presents a bio:
"Always somewhat "different," Ludlam was a rebel and an outcast by his high school years, wearing long hair a decade before it became fashionable." - p x
That wd mean the late '50s or early '60s. I grew my hair long at the beginning of 1968 & I was ruthlessly harassed for it where I lived in Baltimore County, MD. I don't know what "long" means here but I was frequently insulted for having hair long enuf to be over my ears - something that is probably hard to understand these days. If Ludlam's hair was even that "long" he probably endured severe hatred.
"Among the manyon the cutting edge were playwright Ronald Tavel and director John Vaccaro, who formalizes their nascent collaboration in 1966 with the founding of the Play-House of the Ridiculous in a loft on 17th Street. Ludlam made his first New York stage appearance as Peeping Tom in the Ridiculous's premier production, The Life of Lady Godiva.
""We have passed beyond the absurd; our situation is absolutely preposterous," Tavel declared in a program note, and his play gave ample evidence. Like most subsequent efforts in the divergent strains of the Ridiculous, The Life of Lady Godiva was a self-conscious mix of high and low culture, an anarchic, psychosexual phantasmagoria filled with camp, drag, pageantry, grotesquerie, and literary pretension. Its impact on Ludlam cannot be overestimated.
"A subsequent Play-House production proved equally telling. In Screen Test, intended as a half-hour curtain-raiser, a director (Vaccaro himself) was to interview and humiliate an actress and transvestite (an important early member of Ludlam's Ridiculous, Mario Montez)." - p xi
In my review of Tavel's Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays I wrote:
"What got me interested in Tavel's work in the 1st place was curiosity about whether The Theater of the Ridiculous was in any way an advance over The Theater of the Absurd — something I like very much. When I think of The Theater of the Absurd I tend to credit Alfred Jarry w/ being its founder w/ his play "Ubu Roi". From him I think of Eugene Ionesco & then Edward Albee as successors. SO, I wondered: is The Theater of the Ridiculous significantly different enuf from The Theater of the Absurd to qualify as a separate theater mvmt?
""While in college, while staring at the main quadrangle during a lecture of Theatre of the Absurd, I wondered: "What next?' Meaning, "What in the world could come after a Theatre of the Absurd—Theatre of the Ridiculous??" Which was to say, how far could you push this (bulldozer), how steep the descent (from the Greeks), and is there rock bottom? and who cares?" - p 132
"I reckon I'm one of those people who cares. I also reckon that I'm not convinced that The Theater of the Ridiculous added anything theoretically substantial to The Theater of the Absurd. Nonetheless, the plays/scripts themselves are different. I find the absurdist work to be more essentialized & the ridiculous work to be more sprawling. I like them both."
"Soon after Screen Test, Tavel and Vaccaro quarreled and parted. In search of new material, Vaccaro turned to Ludlam, whom he had heard was writing a Ridiculous play."
[..]
"Ludlam himself was slated to star as Tamberlaine's twin opponents, Cosroe and Zabina, but in the middle of rehearsals the famously tempermental Vaccaro fired him. Half of the company walked out with Ludlam and, at a subsequent meeting, encouraged him to stage the play himself. Then they elected him to lead their new troupe, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company." - p xii
Off to a good start, eh? Thoroughly Ridiculous.
"Polemical, furrowed-brow theater was not for him. Ludlam knew life was "comedy to those who think/ a tragedy to those who feel," and he was an irrepressible thinker. Laughter was the great liberator and the great equalizer. Anything carried to an extreme was, willy-nilly, ridiculous."
[..]
"Ludlam survived by working in a health-food store, packaging rare books, doing stunts on "Candid Camera," occasionally receiving help from Christopher Scott." - p xiii
Do you remember "Candid Camera"? I'd almost forgotten about it but I liked it very much. It was a TV show that played pranks on people & used hidden cameras to record their reactions. I remember one in wch a car had its motor removed. It was positioned at the top of a hill at the bottom of wch was a garage. A driver got in the car & pretended to drive the car into the garage. The car was just drifting but the mechanic didn't know that. The driver told the mechanic that there seemed to be something wrong w/ the car & when the mechanic opened the hood & found no motor his bafflement was recorded. Naturally, the driver was an expert at keeping a straight face. Working for them seems like a perfect job for Ludlam.
"The Elephant Woman (a "midnight frolic" consisting of a frame tale and specialty acts having nothing whatever to do with The Elephant Man, the popularity of which it wished to capitalize on)" - p xvi
I like the idea of deliberately naming or categorizing something in a way intended to be misleading. That way one provokes expectations in a (v)audience that can then be stymied. Such miscategorization is like directing a viewer's eyes away from a magic trick thru misdirection. It's a sort of 'anti-spoiler'. If one makes a movie about a poodle but calls it "An Idiot's Guide to Geometry" it might potentially create a state of mind in wch the poodle is seen as a metaphor.
"(Ludlam performed the play weekends while commuting to Pittsburgh to direct William Wycherly's The Country Wife for the drama department at Carnegie-Mellon University.)" - p xvii
Ok, I just threw that in there b/c I'm a Pittsburgher.
"A Quick trip to Coney Island in late 1981 resulted in a second silent black and white film, Museum of Wax, in which Ludlam starred as a homicidal maniac." - p xviii
That can be seen online in 3 parts starting here: https://youtu.be/3HRCpBrMhu0 .
"Ludlam directed the Santa Fe Opera in Henze's English Cat and filmed a guest spot on "Miami Vice" (having made his network television debut the previous year as a guest star on Madeline Kahn's "Oh Madeline")." - p xix
That's Hans Werner Henze, one of my "Top 100 Composers" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100C... ). Ludlam was very active indeed.
"More opportunities followed, The Production of Mysteries, a short opera he had written with the company's resident composer, Peter Golub, in 1980, was performed by Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. He directed his own libretto of Die Fledermaus for the Santa Fe Opera. He filmed an episode of "Tales from the Dark Side" for television and was featured in two movies, Forever Lulu and The Big Easy." - p xix
Amazing. Lukas Foss, a great composer AND a great conductor AND a great improvisor presented his opera. That's seriously wonderful from my POV. Ludlam had serious creative energy out the wazoo. But one can never take anything for granted, the rug might be pulled out from under at any moment.
"The Sorrows of Dolores the very day of its premiere, April; 30, 1987. That same evening, he was hospitalized with pneumocystis pnemonia. Along with other complications, it ended his life on May 28.
"He was only forty-four. He had planned, but not accomplished, his greatest work."
[..]
"We are lucky to have the twenty-nine plays collected here to continue Ludlam's conquest of the universe. Not since Molière have we been blessed with such a playwright, and it make be several centuries more before we see his like again." - p xx
I think Samuels is probably right. Ludlam seems to've been extraordinarily energetic & inspired. Samuels also stimulates me to read Molière, it's about time.
The 1st play is "Big Hotel" from 1966 (according to the bk, on Wikipedia it's sd to've been from 1967). Ludlam might've been 23 when he wrote it.
"CRAMWELL: Yes? Birshitskaya threatening suicide? Throw herself off our roof? Don't let her do it. Talk her out of it. Reason with her! Humor her! Dear me no! Rhis will give the hotel a bad name! Don't let her throw herself off our roof!
"(BIRDSHITSKAYA appears above and throws an effigy of herself off the roof. It lands in front of the desk.)
"CRAMWELL: (To BELLHOP) Is she hurt?
"BELLHOP: (Picking up the limp dummy) No, but she will never dance again. (Carries dummy off)
"CRAMWELL: Thank God she's not hurt." - p 6
Do I detect a touch of the Marx Brothers?
Ludlam embraces self-reflexive & formalist modes of comedy that derail conventional narrative.
Enter BELLHOP. Frantic, CHOCHA, MR. X, and MARTOK torture the MANDARIN.)
"BELLHOP: Somewhere along the line, I have lost the thread of the narrative.
"MANDARIN: Don't look for it here, young man. We have a play to put on.
"BELLHOP: The whole play is falling to pieces. I've lost the thread of the narrative." - p 17
Ludlam's dialog abounds in all sorts of twists & turns.
"BLONDINE: Oh Drago, that sounds just elegant and kind of dreamy, if I may say so. (Looking at menu) How about some orange juice, Joey? (Aside to audience) I ate Limburger cheese with bagels for breakfast. I ate mofongo with garlic dressing at lunch. I ate steak and onions at dinner. But he'll never know, 'cause I always stay kissing sweet the new Dazzle-Dent way.
"DRAGO: I take it this place is soundproof?
"BLONDINE: I don't trust the waiter. He is too short.
"DRAGO: I think Blane knows more than he lets on. He's shielding someone. Sylvia Clarkson saw him with a blonde the night of February second.
"BLONDINE: (Rising suddenly) Build your Maxwell. I'll be right back. I think I'll take my wig off.
"DRAGO: (Roughly forcing her to sit down) You can't afford a week off now. We need you for the Cobra Cunt Ceremony." - p 18
"MANDARIN: (Goes to phone and dials) Hello. Is Mrs. Starkie there? This is Mrs. Cutler. It's about Lumis. No, I don't want to speak to Blane. Lumis! Lumis! (Pause) L as in Lincoln, U as in Utrecht, M as in Massey, I as in Ingres, S as in Synagogue. Lumis! Tell him I called. (Pause) Cutler. (Pause) C as in Cutler, U as in Utrecht, L as in Loomis, E as in Erie, R as in Robespierre . . . (Pause) Robespierre. (Pause) R as in Raw, W as in Wren. A small bird. (Pause) No, this is not Mr. Robespierre. Mr. Starkie. Synagogue. Yes! Raw. Utrecht, Blane. Yes. No-o-o. (He hears bells in the tower) Oh, Blondine, they're playing our song. (Exit)" - p 18
You'd think MANDARIN was calling the US Health Care .Gov hotline: http://youtu.be/tjB3QBz4LAc . Note that they get flustered enuf to misspell "Cutler" by leaving out the "t" & things just get worse from there.
Act III opens w/ some low drama:
"(The elevator opens, revealing SANTA CLAUS, who falls forward on his face, revealing MR. X and CHOCHA behind him. MR. X wipes the blood from his knife.)
"MR.X: Have the corpse leave his name at the desk.
"CHOCHA: That's $12.50.
"MR. X: Well, what is it? Are we leaving or are they going to keep us here all day?
"CHOCHA: They've got some kind of roadblock up ahead.
"MR. X: In 1883, the French tightrope walker, Blondine, walked a rope clear across Niagara Falls!
"CHOCHA: There's no escape. Too bad they can't play it for you now, Mr. X. (They strangle each other and fall dead on stage)" - p 19
&, of course, Blondine is in one of my movies (sortof): https://youtu.be/1GDXxp_g168?t=6493 .
"Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide, A Tragedy" (1967) is up next.
"ZABINA: Then whatever induced you to marry that Mongol tyrant, Tamberlaine?"
Ludlam's plays are full of refernce, of course. The Character TABERLAINE is an example:
" Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
"Marlowe, generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the University Wits, influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes of the bombast and ambition of Tamburlaine's language can be found in English plays all the way to the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamburl...
The "Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642" intrigues me but I don't think I'll look into it further just now. I'd imagine Ludlam wd've been a prime target for such a thing if he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"ZABINA: (Pulling out a whip) Your bare bottom will feel the sting of my whip on television. Petticoats over your head. Let's see your treasure chest. (Lashes whip)
"ALICE: Stand back. I know the only weapon that can destroy you.
"ZABINA: (In horror) What's that in your hand? No. No. Mercy, I beg of you.
"ALICE: Yes! Beer! (Shakes up bottle and squirts it on ZABINA)
"ZABINA: (Screams as she passes out) No, no, not beer. Beer is my undoing.
"ALICE: (Victoriously) Now there is only one Queen on Mars." - p 28
It seems hard to be more Theater of the Ridiculous than that.
Ludlam has flagrant sexuality, something that I present too, something that seems to exist in both a repressed & extremely explicit form in our society. I imagine that in the day of this play the sex was challenging to present.
"VENUS: Doth not Tamberlaine deserve as fortunate abed as ever Venus shlaa couch upon?
"ORTYGIUS: Fie! Foul-mouthed fornicatress.
"COSROE: Whatsa matter, Ortygius? Scared of the French velvet?
"ORTYGIUS: (While the others fuck) Oh, I wish I had never come to court. So many dangers lurk here . . . intrigues and seductions.
"(Fanfare. Enter TAMBERLAINE.)
"TAMBERLAINE: Four worlds in one bed! I'll tickle your catastrophe!
"MAGNAVOX: You'll never take me alive!
"TAMBERLAINE: (Lopping off his dick) You'll never spit white again! Ortygius, what are you doing here?" - p 30
I never get tired of self-referentiality (after all, I do it all the time):
"TAMBERLAINE: That is my secret. We'll go to the theater tonight and let everyone see us.
"ALICE: What's playing?
"TAMBERLAINE: The Conquest of the Universe, or When Queens Collide by Charles Ludlam.
"ALICE: Filth! The insane ravings of a degenerate mind! I won't go! Besides I haven't a thing to wear!
"TAMBERLAINE: It's the theater or rolling dung balls. Take your pick.
"ALICE: I choose . . . the theater." - p
Charles Ludlam's The Complete Plays
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 8, 2023
For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticL...
It took me something like 6 yrs to read this. For a large portion of the time that's b/c I had it sitting near my front door as the bk I'd read while sitting outside on my steps, waiting for food to be delivered & suchlike. But that's not really the only excuse I have. It's 905pp long.. & it's PLAYS. I've never liked reading plays that much. Still, I'm glad I finally made it thru it all, I'm sorry I've never seen any of them performed, I'll bet they're much more fun to witness in the flesh than they are as things to read. They're probably hilarious.
I 1st heard of Ludlam as one of the main progenitors of the Theater of the Ridiculous, something that I 1st became aware of thru the films made by Ronald Tavel in collaboration w/ Andy Warhol. I reviewed a bk relevant to those here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Alas, the complete review is no longer online b/c Goodreads removed the section where it was posted.
John Vaccaro is reputed to've been the 3rd person of prominence in the Ridiculous. According to a Wikipedia entry:
"Another perspective is that Ludlam's productions were too close to conventional comedy, while Vacarro's work was more challenging, emphasizing social commentary. Leee Black Childers was quoted in Legs McNeil's 1997 Please Kill Me:
"In my opinion, John Vaccaro was more important than Charles Ludlam, because Ludlam followed theatrical traditions and used a lot of drag. People felt very comfortable with Charles Ludlam. Everyone's attitude going to see Charles's plays was that they were going to see a really funny, irreverent, slapstick drag show. They never felt embarrassed.
"But John Vaccaro was way past that. Way, way past that. John Vaccaro was dangerous. John Vaccaro could be very embarrassing on many levels. He used thalidomide babies and Siamese triplets joined together at the asshole. One actor had this huge papier-mache prop of a big cock coming out of his shorts, down to his knees. He also couldn't control his bowel movements, so shit was dripping down his legs the whole time and everyone loved it. People loved this kind of visually confrontational theater." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre...
So, on the one hand we're told that Vaccaro was "dangerous" & "embarrassing on many levels" &, on the other hand, we're told that everyone "loved this kind of visually confrontational theater." To me, that seems somewhat contradictory. If the work were truly "dangerous" it seems more likely to me that people wd be scared & wd want to leave. Perhaps there was some envy of Ludlam as someone who was starting to break into Hollywood before he died.
As for Tavel, I reckon he was hoping that Warhol wd help usher him into stardom. Instead, Warhol's production values cd've hardly been lower & what content there was of note in Tavel's screenplays was largely destroyed by bad sound & fixed camera positions.
In a manifesto presented on p vii Ludlam writes:
"Aim: To get beyond nihilism by revaluing combat."
[..]
"1. You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low."
Steven Samuels presents a bio:
"Always somewhat "different," Ludlam was a rebel and an outcast by his high school years, wearing long hair a decade before it became fashionable." - p x
That wd mean the late '50s or early '60s. I grew my hair long at the beginning of 1968 & I was ruthlessly harassed for it where I lived in Baltimore County, MD. I don't know what "long" means here but I was frequently insulted for having hair long enuf to be over my ears - something that is probably hard to understand these days. If Ludlam's hair was even that "long" he probably endured severe hatred.
"Among the manyon the cutting edge were playwright Ronald Tavel and director John Vaccaro, who formalizes their nascent collaboration in 1966 with the founding of the Play-House of the Ridiculous in a loft on 17th Street. Ludlam made his first New York stage appearance as Peeping Tom in the Ridiculous's premier production, The Life of Lady Godiva.
""We have passed beyond the absurd; our situation is absolutely preposterous," Tavel declared in a program note, and his play gave ample evidence. Like most subsequent efforts in the divergent strains of the Ridiculous, The Life of Lady Godiva was a self-conscious mix of high and low culture, an anarchic, psychosexual phantasmagoria filled with camp, drag, pageantry, grotesquerie, and literary pretension. Its impact on Ludlam cannot be overestimated.
"A subsequent Play-House production proved equally telling. In Screen Test, intended as a half-hour curtain-raiser, a director (Vaccaro himself) was to interview and humiliate an actress and transvestite (an important early member of Ludlam's Ridiculous, Mario Montez)." - p xi
In my review of Tavel's Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays I wrote:
"What got me interested in Tavel's work in the 1st place was curiosity about whether The Theater of the Ridiculous was in any way an advance over The Theater of the Absurd — something I like very much. When I think of The Theater of the Absurd I tend to credit Alfred Jarry w/ being its founder w/ his play "Ubu Roi". From him I think of Eugene Ionesco & then Edward Albee as successors. SO, I wondered: is The Theater of the Ridiculous significantly different enuf from The Theater of the Absurd to qualify as a separate theater mvmt?
""While in college, while staring at the main quadrangle during a lecture of Theatre of the Absurd, I wondered: "What next?' Meaning, "What in the world could come after a Theatre of the Absurd—Theatre of the Ridiculous??" Which was to say, how far could you push this (bulldozer), how steep the descent (from the Greeks), and is there rock bottom? and who cares?" - p 132
"I reckon I'm one of those people who cares. I also reckon that I'm not convinced that The Theater of the Ridiculous added anything theoretically substantial to The Theater of the Absurd. Nonetheless, the plays/scripts themselves are different. I find the absurdist work to be more essentialized & the ridiculous work to be more sprawling. I like them both."
"Soon after Screen Test, Tavel and Vaccaro quarreled and parted. In search of new material, Vaccaro turned to Ludlam, whom he had heard was writing a Ridiculous play."
[..]
"Ludlam himself was slated to star as Tamberlaine's twin opponents, Cosroe and Zabina, but in the middle of rehearsals the famously tempermental Vaccaro fired him. Half of the company walked out with Ludlam and, at a subsequent meeting, encouraged him to stage the play himself. Then they elected him to lead their new troupe, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company." - p xii
Off to a good start, eh? Thoroughly Ridiculous.
"Polemical, furrowed-brow theater was not for him. Ludlam knew life was "comedy to those who think/ a tragedy to those who feel," and he was an irrepressible thinker. Laughter was the great liberator and the great equalizer. Anything carried to an extreme was, willy-nilly, ridiculous."
[..]
"Ludlam survived by working in a health-food store, packaging rare books, doing stunts on "Candid Camera," occasionally receiving help from Christopher Scott." - p xiii
Do you remember "Candid Camera"? I'd almost forgotten about it but I liked it very much. It was a TV show that played pranks on people & used hidden cameras to record their reactions. I remember one in wch a car had its motor removed. It was positioned at the top of a hill at the bottom of wch was a garage. A driver got in the car & pretended to drive the car into the garage. The car was just drifting but the mechanic didn't know that. The driver told the mechanic that there seemed to be something wrong w/ the car & when the mechanic opened the hood & found no motor his bafflement was recorded. Naturally, the driver was an expert at keeping a straight face. Working for them seems like a perfect job for Ludlam.
"The Elephant Woman (a "midnight frolic" consisting of a frame tale and specialty acts having nothing whatever to do with The Elephant Man, the popularity of which it wished to capitalize on)" - p xvi
I like the idea of deliberately naming or categorizing something in a way intended to be misleading. That way one provokes expectations in a (v)audience that can then be stymied. Such miscategorization is like directing a viewer's eyes away from a magic trick thru misdirection. It's a sort of 'anti-spoiler'. If one makes a movie about a poodle but calls it "An Idiot's Guide to Geometry" it might potentially create a state of mind in wch the poodle is seen as a metaphor.
"(Ludlam performed the play weekends while commuting to Pittsburgh to direct William Wycherly's The Country Wife for the drama department at Carnegie-Mellon University.)" - p xvii
Ok, I just threw that in there b/c I'm a Pittsburgher.
"A Quick trip to Coney Island in late 1981 resulted in a second silent black and white film, Museum of Wax, in which Ludlam starred as a homicidal maniac." - p xviii
That can be seen online in 3 parts starting here: https://youtu.be/3HRCpBrMhu0 .
"Ludlam directed the Santa Fe Opera in Henze's English Cat and filmed a guest spot on "Miami Vice" (having made his network television debut the previous year as a guest star on Madeline Kahn's "Oh Madeline")." - p xix
That's Hans Werner Henze, one of my "Top 100 Composers" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Top100C... ). Ludlam was very active indeed.
"More opportunities followed, The Production of Mysteries, a short opera he had written with the company's resident composer, Peter Golub, in 1980, was performed by Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. He directed his own libretto of Die Fledermaus for the Santa Fe Opera. He filmed an episode of "Tales from the Dark Side" for television and was featured in two movies, Forever Lulu and The Big Easy." - p xix
Amazing. Lukas Foss, a great composer AND a great conductor AND a great improvisor presented his opera. That's seriously wonderful from my POV. Ludlam had serious creative energy out the wazoo. But one can never take anything for granted, the rug might be pulled out from under at any moment.
"The Sorrows of Dolores the very day of its premiere, April; 30, 1987. That same evening, he was hospitalized with pneumocystis pnemonia. Along with other complications, it ended his life on May 28.
"He was only forty-four. He had planned, but not accomplished, his greatest work."
[..]
"We are lucky to have the twenty-nine plays collected here to continue Ludlam's conquest of the universe. Not since Molière have we been blessed with such a playwright, and it make be several centuries more before we see his like again." - p xx
I think Samuels is probably right. Ludlam seems to've been extraordinarily energetic & inspired. Samuels also stimulates me to read Molière, it's about time.
The 1st play is "Big Hotel" from 1966 (according to the bk, on Wikipedia it's sd to've been from 1967). Ludlam might've been 23 when he wrote it.
"CRAMWELL: Yes? Birshitskaya threatening suicide? Throw herself off our roof? Don't let her do it. Talk her out of it. Reason with her! Humor her! Dear me no! Rhis will give the hotel a bad name! Don't let her throw herself off our roof!
"(BIRDSHITSKAYA appears above and throws an effigy of herself off the roof. It lands in front of the desk.)
"CRAMWELL: (To BELLHOP) Is she hurt?
"BELLHOP: (Picking up the limp dummy) No, but she will never dance again. (Carries dummy off)
"CRAMWELL: Thank God she's not hurt." - p 6
Do I detect a touch of the Marx Brothers?
Ludlam embraces self-reflexive & formalist modes of comedy that derail conventional narrative.
Enter BELLHOP. Frantic, CHOCHA, MR. X, and MARTOK torture the MANDARIN.)
"BELLHOP: Somewhere along the line, I have lost the thread of the narrative.
"MANDARIN: Don't look for it here, young man. We have a play to put on.
"BELLHOP: The whole play is falling to pieces. I've lost the thread of the narrative." - p 17
Ludlam's dialog abounds in all sorts of twists & turns.
"BLONDINE: Oh Drago, that sounds just elegant and kind of dreamy, if I may say so. (Looking at menu) How about some orange juice, Joey? (Aside to audience) I ate Limburger cheese with bagels for breakfast. I ate mofongo with garlic dressing at lunch. I ate steak and onions at dinner. But he'll never know, 'cause I always stay kissing sweet the new Dazzle-Dent way.
"DRAGO: I take it this place is soundproof?
"BLONDINE: I don't trust the waiter. He is too short.
"DRAGO: I think Blane knows more than he lets on. He's shielding someone. Sylvia Clarkson saw him with a blonde the night of February second.
"BLONDINE: (Rising suddenly) Build your Maxwell. I'll be right back. I think I'll take my wig off.
"DRAGO: (Roughly forcing her to sit down) You can't afford a week off now. We need you for the Cobra Cunt Ceremony." - p 18
"MANDARIN: (Goes to phone and dials) Hello. Is Mrs. Starkie there? This is Mrs. Cutler. It's about Lumis. No, I don't want to speak to Blane. Lumis! Lumis! (Pause) L as in Lincoln, U as in Utrecht, M as in Massey, I as in Ingres, S as in Synagogue. Lumis! Tell him I called. (Pause) Cutler. (Pause) C as in Cutler, U as in Utrecht, L as in Loomis, E as in Erie, R as in Robespierre . . . (Pause) Robespierre. (Pause) R as in Raw, W as in Wren. A small bird. (Pause) No, this is not Mr. Robespierre. Mr. Starkie. Synagogue. Yes! Raw. Utrecht, Blane. Yes. No-o-o. (He hears bells in the tower) Oh, Blondine, they're playing our song. (Exit)" - p 18
You'd think MANDARIN was calling the US Health Care .Gov hotline: http://youtu.be/tjB3QBz4LAc . Note that they get flustered enuf to misspell "Cutler" by leaving out the "t" & things just get worse from there.
Act III opens w/ some low drama:
"(The elevator opens, revealing SANTA CLAUS, who falls forward on his face, revealing MR. X and CHOCHA behind him. MR. X wipes the blood from his knife.)
"MR.X: Have the corpse leave his name at the desk.
"CHOCHA: That's $12.50.
"MR. X: Well, what is it? Are we leaving or are they going to keep us here all day?
"CHOCHA: They've got some kind of roadblock up ahead.
"MR. X: In 1883, the French tightrope walker, Blondine, walked a rope clear across Niagara Falls!
"CHOCHA: There's no escape. Too bad they can't play it for you now, Mr. X. (They strangle each other and fall dead on stage)" - p 19
&, of course, Blondine is in one of my movies (sortof): https://youtu.be/1GDXxp_g168?t=6493 .
"Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide, A Tragedy" (1967) is up next.
"ZABINA: Then whatever induced you to marry that Mongol tyrant, Tamberlaine?"
Ludlam's plays are full of refernce, of course. The Character TABERLAINE is an example:
" Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.
"Marlowe, generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the University Wits, influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes of the bombast and ambition of Tamburlaine's language can be found in English plays all the way to the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamburl...
The "Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642" intrigues me but I don't think I'll look into it further just now. I'd imagine Ludlam wd've been a prime target for such a thing if he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"ZABINA: (Pulling out a whip) Your bare bottom will feel the sting of my whip on television. Petticoats over your head. Let's see your treasure chest. (Lashes whip)
"ALICE: Stand back. I know the only weapon that can destroy you.
"ZABINA: (In horror) What's that in your hand? No. No. Mercy, I beg of you.
"ALICE: Yes! Beer! (Shakes up bottle and squirts it on ZABINA)
"ZABINA: (Screams as she passes out) No, no, not beer. Beer is my undoing.
"ALICE: (Victoriously) Now there is only one Queen on Mars." - p 28
It seems hard to be more Theater of the Ridiculous than that.
Ludlam has flagrant sexuality, something that I present too, something that seems to exist in both a repressed & extremely explicit form in our society. I imagine that in the day of this play the sex was challenging to present.
"VENUS: Doth not Tamberlaine deserve as fortunate abed as ever Venus shlaa couch upon?
"ORTYGIUS: Fie! Foul-mouthed fornicatress.
"COSROE: Whatsa matter, Ortygius? Scared of the French velvet?
"ORTYGIUS: (While the others fuck) Oh, I wish I had never come to court. So many dangers lurk here . . . intrigues and seductions.
"(Fanfare. Enter TAMBERLAINE.)
"TAMBERLAINE: Four worlds in one bed! I'll tickle your catastrophe!
"MAGNAVOX: You'll never take me alive!
"TAMBERLAINE: (Lopping off his dick) You'll never spit white again! Ortygius, what are you doing here?" - p 30
I never get tired of self-referentiality (after all, I do it all the time):
"TAMBERLAINE: That is my secret. We'll go to the theater tonight and let everyone see us.
"ALICE: What's playing?
"TAMBERLAINE: The Conquest of the Universe, or When Queens Collide by Charles Ludlam.
"ALICE: Filth! The insane ravings of a degenerate mind! I won't go! Besides I haven't a thing to wear!
"TAMBERLAINE: It's the theater or rolling dung balls. Take your pick.
"ALICE: I choose . . . the theater." - p
October 20, 2007
Jane: "Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth, and the thought of what I was should give me courage and dignity."
Nicodemus: "Thank you, Janey. In the future while I'm shoveling shit I'll try to think of myself as a prince in disguise."
From The Mystery of Irma Vep
Nicodemus: "Thank you, Janey. In the future while I'm shoveling shit I'll try to think of myself as a prince in disguise."
From The Mystery of Irma Vep
January 29, 2016
Ludlam's plays are experimental comedies involving quick costume changes, cross-dressing, multiple roles played by a very small number of actors, genre parodies and a high-intensity combination of farce and melodrama. These plays don't all work perfectly- there's a reason Ludlam is mostly remembered for his "The Mystery of Irma Vep," and not for much else. But in terms of showcasing the fun of theatre at its most bare-bones, stripped-down, imagination-heavy craziness, Ludlam has been a huge influence on me as an author and an actor.
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