Charles Ludlam And The Ridiculous Theatrical Company

Author : Rick Roemer
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2010-07-13
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0786445106

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Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company by Rick Roemer Pdf

In the late 1960s, Charles Ludlam (1943-1987) brought his unique brand of theatre to New York audiences. Based in part on traditional comic characters, his "ridiculous" school included such inspirations as Hollywood B movies, camp, drag, and opera. His shows were also a study in self-collaboration; Ludlam acted as playwright, director, designer, and actor in his own Off Broadway theatre--the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Critically, Ludlam's works were often overlooked or misunderstood, and since his death The Mystery of Irma Vep is the only one of his 29 plays consistently performed in regional theatres. This work provides an overview of Ludlam's life, explores the theatrical underpinnings of his work and goes on to cover the entire Ludlam canon. The book includes examinations of such plays as Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde, Bluebeard, Galas and Stage Blood. It concludes with a look at Ludlam's work in the 1980s when he focused on presenting new plays, many of them original farces.

Author : Rick Roemer
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:49015003462844

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Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company by Rick Roemer Pdf

Ludlam (1943-1987) first brought his unique brand of theater to New York audiences in the late 1960s. Based in part on traditional comic characters, his ridiculous school included such inspirations as Hollywood B movies, camp, drag, opera and theatrical artifice. The author provides an overview of Ludlam's life, exploring the theatrical underpinnings of his work and then the whole Ludlam canon. A look at Ludlam's work in the 1980s concludes the work. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Sean Edgecomb
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2017-06-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780472053551

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Charles Ludlam Lives! by Sean Edgecomb Pdf

Playwright, actor and director Charles Ludlam (1943–1987) helped to galvanize the Ridiculous style of theater in New York City starting in the 1960s. Decades after his death, his place in the chronicle of American theater has remained constant, but his influence has changed. Although his Ridiculous Theatrical Company shut its doors, the Ludlamesque Ridiculous has continued to thrive and remain a groundbreaking genre, maintaining its relevance and potency by metamorphosing along with changes in the LGBTQ community. Author Sean F. Edgecomb focuses on the neo-Ridiculous artists Charles Busch, Bradford Louryk, and Taylor Mac to trace the connections between Ludlam’s legacy and their performances, using alternative queer models such as kinetic kinship, lateral historiography, and a new approach to camp. Charles Ludlam Lives! demonstrates that the queer legacy of Ludlam is one of distinct transformation—one where artists can reject faithful interpretations in order to move in new interpretive directions.

Author : Charles Ludlam
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:39015028424094

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Ridiculous Theatre by Charles Ludlam Pdf

Author : David Kaufman
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
Page : 548 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 155783637X

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Ridiculous! by David Kaufman Pdf

(Applause Books). From his first unscripted appearance on an Off-Broadway stage in the revolutionary 1960s to the frontpage news of his death from AIDS in 1987 at age 44, Charles Ludlam embodied and helped to engender the upheavals of his time. The astonishing life and legacy of this force to be reckoned with are at last revealed in RIDICULOUS! , a literary biography of an American comic genius. After founding the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967, Ludlam sustained an ever-shifting troupe of bohemian players through two decades of perennially daunting circumstances by writing 29 plays plays that he starred in and directed as well. While Ludlam's work has become increasingly popular at regional theatres, on college campuses, and on stages throughout the world, his gender-bending theories and wide-ranging cultural impact have reached far beyond Bette Midler, the original cast members of Saturday Night Live and the countless other artists he influenced during his abbreviated lifetime. Like his early plays, Ludlam's life was rife with the sex, drugs and creative experimentation that characterized the freewheeling '60s and '70s. Based on a decade of research and interviews with more than 150 people who knew or worked with Ludlam including all of the major players in his troupe and seven of his lovers RIDICULOUS! recreates the dramatic life of an inimitable and subversive theatrical master with you-are-there intensity. Winner of the LAMBDA Literary Award for Biography and the Theatre Library Association Award for Outstanding Theatre Book of the Year "David Kaufman makes a persuasive case for Ludlam's being a genius ... As a record of Ludlam's life and the theatrical world in which he was both guru and grandmaster, this book is informed and passionate." Mel Gussow, The New York Times "A fascinating portrait of an authentic stage genius and the New York avant-garde scene in which he toiled with such demented and dedicated diligence." Playbill "The phenom who inspired everyone from Bette Midler and Madeline Kahn to Tony Kushner and Paul Rudnick was no box of chocolates which, as reading experiences go, makes his story all the sweeter." Vanity Fair "This is one helluva piece of work." Marilyn Stasio, Variety.com

Author : David Kaufman
Publisher : Applause Theatre & Cinema
Page : 552 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:39015056439741

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Ridiculous! by David Kaufman Pdf

A former theater critic for the New York Daily News, Kaufman has been covering theater in New York for some 20 years, and is a long-time contributor to The Nation, the Village Voice, and The New York Times. Here he gives an account of the life of Charles Ludlam (1946-1987), a prominent figure in the theater avant-garde, a pioneer of drag performance, and founder of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company (1967), whose work has influenced such performers as Bette Midler and the original cast of Saturday Night Live. Kaufman spent some ten years researching the book and interviewing key people in Ludlam's life and career. Illustrated with b & w photos. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Bonnie Marranca,Gautam Dasgupta
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Drama
ISBN : UOM:39015039924785

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Theatre of the Ridiculous by Bonnie Marranca,Gautam Dasgupta Pdf

As a theatrical form, the "ridiculous" thrived in the 1970s and early 1980s, playfully subverting dramatic and social convention in its mix of camp, role-playing, literary and cinematic allusions--and anticipating the current interest in gender, cross-dressing, and popular culture. Originally published in 1979, THEATRE OF THE RIDICULOUS (now revised and updated) was the first book to document this innovative and challenging form.

Author : Charles Ludlam
Publisher : Samuel French, Inc.
Page : 84 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0573640467

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The Mystery of Irma Vep by Charles Ludlam Pdf

Cover title: The Ridiculous Theatrical Co. presents Charles Ludlam's The mystery of Irma Vep.

Author : Leandro Katz
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Theater
ISBN : 9872458138

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Bedlam Days by Leandro Katz Pdf

Author : Charles Ludlum
Publisher : Theatre Communications Group
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2022-11-29
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781636701837

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The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays by Charles Ludlum Pdf

“Ludlam’s is a dazzling and significant body of work, and it should be accorded a place of greatest regard and honor in the American dramatic literary canon. The plays are funny, erudite, poetic, transgressive, erotic, moving, and so theatrical they seem the Platonic ideal of everything we mean when we use that word. The plays are the sublime expressions of what Ludlam insisted was not an aesthetic, but a moral vision: anti-Puritan, unsentimentally utopian, sexually destabilizing—a transporting, a transcendence by means of deflation, a joyous and subversive, even dangerous revelry leading to revelation, a wise and ecstatic celebration of the world.” –Tony Kushner (from his Preface) Artistic director, playwright, director, designer and star of New York's acclaimed Ridiculous Theatrical Company, the late Charles Ludlam ransacked theatrical and literary history in an evolutionary quest for a modern art of stage comedy. His more than 30 plays are among the most thought-provoking entertainments in the modern repertoire. As Ludlam himself put it, "This is farce, not Sunday school." This collection includes an introduction by Tony Kushner alongside Ludlam's most famous and celebrated works for the stage: The Mystery of Irma Vep: Ludlam's most famous play, this is a hilarious send up of Daphne de Maurier, Jane Eyre and Victorian cross dressing. One of the most produced plays in the United States, The Mystery of Irma Vep is “the most perfect expression of Ludlam’s approach to theatre: a play that simultaneously provokes terror, laughter and a grotesque mockery of all gender, literary and special boundaries” (Village Voice). Camille: based on La Dame aux Camélias, this satirical take on the tubercular courtesan brings any audience “to unexpected heights of pathos and laughter” (San Francisco Chronicle). Galas: the life of opera singer Maria Callas imagined as a modern tragedy, in which Ludlam himself assayed the part of the diva. Stage Blood: Ludlam's take on Shakespeare, with actors putting on Hamlet both on stage and back stage; somehow, in this tragedy, everything comes out for the best. Bluebeard: somewhat based on H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau, Bluebeard tells the story of a mad vivisectionist in search of a third sex.

Author : GUSTAVE. FLAUBERT
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1033208396

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SALAMBO by GUSTAVE. FLAUBERT Pdf

Author : André Gregory,Todd London
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780374713270

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This Is Not My Memoir by André Gregory,Todd London Pdf

The autobiography-of-sorts of André Gregory, an iconic figure in American theater and the star of My Dinner with André This is Not My Memoir tells the life story of André Gregory, iconic theatre director, writer, and actor. For the first time, Gregory shares memories from a life lived for art, including stories from the making of My Dinner with André. Taking on the dizzying, wondrous nature of a fever dream, This is Not My Memoir includes fantastic and fantastical stories that take the reader from wartime Paris to golden-age Hollywood, from avant-garde theaters to monasteries in India. Along the way we meet Jerzy Grotowski, Helene Weigel, Gregory Peck, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Wallace Shawn, and many other larger-than-life personalities. This is Not My Memoir is a collaboration between Gregory and Todd London who create a portrait of an artist confronting his later years. Here, too, are the reflections of a man who only recently learned how to love. What does it mean to create art in a world that often places little value on the process of creating it? And what does it mean to confront the process of aging when your greatest work of art may well be your own life?

Author : Will Eno
Publisher : Theatre Communications Group
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2012-10-25
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781559367660

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The Flu Season and Other Plays by Will Eno Pdf

New works by the author of the Pulitzer finalist Thom Pain (based on nothing).

Author : Emmanuel S. Nelson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2003-06-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313017094

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Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights by Emmanuel S. Nelson Pdf

Gay presence is nothing new to American verse and theater. Homoerotic themes are discernible in American poetry as early as the 19th century, and identifiably gay characters appeared on the American stage more than 70 years ago. But aside from a few notable exceptions, gay artists of earlier generations felt compelled to avoid sexual candor in their writings. Conversely, most contemporary gay poets and playwrights are free from such constraints and have created a remarkable body of work. This reference is a guide to their creative achievements. Alphabetically arranged entries present 62 contemporary gay American poets and dramatists. While the majority of included writers are younger artists who came of age in the post-Stonewall U.S., some are older authors whose work has continued or persisted into recent decades. A number of these writers are well known, including Edward Albee, Harvey Fierstein, and Allen Ginsberg. Others, such as Alan Bowne, Timothy Liu, and Robert O'Hara, merit wider recognition. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the author's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies.

Author : Kelly I. Aliano
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2018-10-30
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781476634722

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Theatre of the Ridiculous by Kelly I. Aliano Pdf

Theatre of the Ridiculous is a significant movement that highlighted the radical possibilities inherent in camp. Much of contemporary theatre owes this form a great debt but little has been written about its history or aesthetic markers. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the important practitioners, along with critical commentary of their work. Beginning with Ridiculous’ most recognizable name, Charles Ludlam, the author traces the development of this campy, queer genre, from the B movies of Maria Montez to the Pop Art scene of Andy Warhol to the founding of the Play-House of the Ridiculous and the dawn of Ludlam’s career and finally to the contemporary theatre scene.