Download or read book Ridiculous Theatre written by Charles Ludlam and published by Theatre Communications Grou. This book was released on 1992 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never widely available in his lifetime, Ludlam's essays and opinions of theatre reveal a complex mind focused on theatrical invention.
Download or read book Ridiculous written by David Kaufman and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2005 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (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
Download or read book Theatre of the Ridiculous written by Bonnie Marranca and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company written by Rick Roemer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-07-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Theatre of the Absurd written by Martin Esslin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understand one another. In 1961, Martin Esslin gave a name to the phenomenon in his groundbreaking study of these playwrights who dramatized the absurdity at the core of the human condition. Over four decades after its initial publication, Esslin’s landmark book has lost none of its freshness. The questions these dramatists raise about the struggle for meaning in a purposeless world are still as incisive and necessary today as they were when Beckett’s tramps first waited beneath a dying tree on a lonely country road for a mysterious benefactor who would never show. Authoritative, engaging, and eminently readable, The Theatre of the Absurd is nothing short of a classic: vital reading for anyone with an interest in the theatre.
Download or read book Theatre of the Ridiculous written by Kelly I. Aliano and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Charles Ludlam Lives written by Sean Edgecomb and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Drama Menu written by Glyn Trefor-Jones and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Packed full of drama games, ideas and suggestions, Drama Menu is a unique new resource for drama teachers.
Download or read book Enter Laughing written by Joseph Stein and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1984 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The semi-autobiographical, riotous account of stage-struck young David Kolowitz, originated on Broadway by Alan Arkin, working as a delivery boy in a sewing machine factory. Denying his parent's wishes for a druggist in the family, he leaves their dreams and his devoted girlfriend Wanda behind and is soon enlisted (and paying for) a slot as the "leading man" in a third-rate theatrical company while being vamped by the resident less-than leading lady, the daughter of the hammy "artistic director.
Download or read book The Ridiculous Darkness written by Wolfram Lotz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I have a right to appear here. Otherwise, who will listen to me? Where should I talk about myself, if not here?” Ultimo has a degree in piracy from Mogadishu University of Applied Sciences. Tofdau won't rest until his story's told. Sergeant Pellner and Officer Dorsch are sailing up the Hindu Kush in search of Lieutenant Colonel Deutinger in the rainforest of Afghanistan. And at his parents' home in Bad Rippoldsau, Wolfram Lotz is experiencing writer's block. Critically acclaimed dark comedy The Ridiculous Darkness, by award-winning German playwright Wolfram Lotz, is a surreal, hilarious and powerful response to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now that invites us to rethink colonial narratives, confront our ideas of each other and question what we imagine is in the darkness. Four black femmes. Three revered White Male Writers. Two classic works. A radical deconstruction.
Download or read book Playing Underground written by Stephen J. Scott-Bottoms and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-11-10 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Scrupulously researched, critically acute, and written with care, Playing Underground will become a classic account of an era of hard-won free expression." -William Coco "At last---a book documenting the beginnings of Off-Off Broadway theater. Playing Underground is an insightful, illuminating, and honest appraisal of this important period in American theater." -Rosalyn Drexler, author of Art Does (Not!) Exist and Occupational Hazard "An epic movie of an epic movement, Playing Underground is a book the world has waited for without knowing it. How precisely it captures the evolution of our revolution! I am amazed by the book's scope and scale, and I bless its author especially for giving two greats, Paul Foster and H. M. Koutoukas, their proper, polar places, and for memorializing such unjustly forgotten masterpieces as Irene Fornes's Molly's Dream and Jeff Weiss's A Funny Walk Home. Stephen Bottoms's vivid evocation of the grand adventure of Off-Off Broadway has woken and broken my heart. It is difficult to believe that he was not there alongside me to breathe the caffeine-nicotine-alkaloid-steeped air." -Robert Patrick, author of Kennedy's Children and Temple Slave Few books address the legendary age of 1960s off-off Broadway theater. Fortunately, Stephen Bottoms fills that gap with Playing Underground---the first comprehensive history of the roots of off-off Broadway. This is a theater whose legacy is still felt today: it was the launching pad for many leading contemporary theater artists, including Sam Shepard, Maria Irene Fornes, and others, and it was a pivotal influence on improv comedy and shows like Saturday Night Live. Off-off Broadway groups such as the Living Theatre, La Mama, and Caffe Cino captured the spirit of nontraditional theater with their edgy, unscripted, boundary-crossing subjects. Yet, as Bottoms discovers, there is no one set of truths about off-off Broadway to uncover; the entire scene was always more a matter of competing perceptions than a singular, concrete reality. No other author has managed to illuminate this shifting tableau as Bottoms does. Through interviews with dozens of the era's leading playwrights, performers, directors, and critics, he unearths a countercultural theater movement that was both influential and transforming-yet ephemeral and quintessentially of its moment. Playing Underground will be a definitive work on the subject, offering a complete picture of an important but little-studied period in American theater.
Download or read book The Traveling Companion and Other Plays written by Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Collected here for the first time, these twelve plays embrace what Time magazine called "the four major concerns of Williams' dramatic imagination: loneliness, love, the violated heart and the valiancy of survival"--Back cover.
Download or read book Re Thinking Character in the Theatre of the Absurd written by Carmen Dominte and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the character as a central element, this volume provides insights into the Theatre of the Absurd, highlighting its specific key characteristics. Adopting both semiotic-structuralist and mathematical approaches, its analysis of the absurdist character introduces new models of investigation, including a possible algebraic model operating on the scenic, dramatic and paradigmatic level of a play, not only exploring the relations, configurations, confrontations, functions and situations but also providing necessary information for a possible geometric model. The book also takes into consideration the relations established among the most important units of a dramatic work, character, cue, décor and régie, re-configuring the basic pattern. It will be useful for any reader interested in analyzing, staging or writing a play starting from a single character.
Download or read book Re dressing the Canon written by Alisa Solomon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1997 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solomon examines the relationship between gender and performance in a series of essays which combine the critique of specific live performances with an astute theoretical analysis.
Download or read book Theatre Histories written by Phillip B. Zarrilli and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2010 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a clear journey through centuries of European, North and South American, African and Asian forms of theatre and performance, this introduction helps the reader think critically about this exciting field through fascinating yet plain-speaking essays and case studies.
Download or read book Beyond Ridiculous written by Kenneth Elliott and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Ridiculous tells the story of Theatre-in-Limbo. Elliott narrates in first-person the company's Cinderella tale of fun, heartbreak, and dishy drama. At the center of the book is a young Charles Busch, an unforgettable personality fighting to be seen, be heard, and express his unique style as a writer-performer. The tragedy of AIDS among treasured friends in the company, the struggle for mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ theatre during the reign of President Ronald Reagan, and the exploration of new ways of being a gay theatre artist make the book a bittersweet and joyous ride.
Download or read book Life Sucks written by Aaron Posner and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brash reworking of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, a group of old friends, ex-lovers, estranged in-laws, and lifelong enemies gather to grapple with life’s thorniest questions—and each other. What could possibly go wrong? Incurably lustful and lonely, hapless and hopeful, these seven souls collide and stumble their way towards a new understanding that LIFE SUCKS! Or does it?
