Download or read book The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays written by Charles Ludlum and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book The Mystery of Irma Vep written by Charles Ludlam and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1987 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover title: The Ridiculous Theatrical Co. presents Charles Ludlam's The mystery of Irma Vep.
Download or read book The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays written by Charles Ludlam and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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 Cam lias, 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. Charles Ludlam: Artistic director, playwright, director, designer and star of New York's acclaimed Ridiculous Theatrical Company. During his twenty years with the Ridiculous, he won Obie and Drama Desk awards as well as playwriting fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. His more than thirty plays are among the most thought-provoking entertainments in the modern repertoire and continue to be widely performed throughout the world.
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 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 Blood on the Stage 1975 2000 written by Amnon Kabatchnik and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussing more than 80 full-length plays, this volume provides an overview of the most important and memorable theatrical works of crime and detection produced between 1975 and 2000. Each entry includes a plot synopsis, production data, and the opinions of well-known and respected critics and scholars.
Download or read book Camp written by Fabio Cleto and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete guide to c& an anthology of the best writing on its history and current theory in cultural studies and lesbian and gay studies
Download or read book Costume Craftwork on a Budget written by Tan Huaixiang and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of your job as the costume designer is to be creative and use what materials are available to you to execute the design elements in a production. This book will show you how to use inexpensive materials to create durable products in a short amount of time that are practical and technical. It is written in an easy-to-follow manner and each step is shown with a wide array of illustrations and photographs. From creating armour out of laundry baskets, to detailed tricks to create a prosthetic nose for a witch, this book will show the techniques needed for you to produce end results that are beautiful, economical, and fast to make.
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 Amber Waves written by James Still and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of AATE's Distinguished Play Award and originally produced at The Kennedy Center, Amber Waves focuses children in a family struggling to hold on to their farm and each other. This acclaimed one act about children in a struggling farm family is now available in a full length version that builds on the emotional strengths of the shorter play.
Download or read book The Facts on File Companion to American Drama written by Jackson R. Bryer and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features a comprehensive guide to American dramatic literature, from its origins in the early days of the nation to the groundbreaking works of today's best writers.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater written by James Fisher and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 1233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater. Second Edition covers theatrical practice and practitioners as well as the dramatic literature of the United States of America from 1930 to the present. The 90 years covered by this volume features the triumph of Broadway as the center of American drama from 1930 to the early 1960s through a Golden Age exemplified by the plays of Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Lorraine Hansberry, and Edward Albee, among others. The impact of the previous modernist era contributed greatly to this period of prodigious creativity on American stages. This volume will continue through an exploration of the decline of Broadway as the center of U.S. theater in the 1960s and the evolution of regional theaters, as well as fringe and university theaters that spawned a second Golden Age at the millennium that produced another – and significantly more diverse – generation of significant dramatists including such figures as Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Maria Irené Fornes, Beth Henley, Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, and numerous others. The impact of the Great Depression and World War II profoundly influenced the development of the American stage, as did the conformist 1950s and the revolutionary 1960s on in to the complex times in which we currently live. Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary American Theater, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1.000 cross-referenced entries on plays, playwrights, directors, designers, actors, critics, producers, theaters, and terminology. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about American theater.
Download or read book Homebody Kabul written by Tony Kushner and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul is the most remarkable play in a decade...without a doubt the most important of our time.''--John Heilpern, New York Observer In Homebody/Kabul, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, has turned his penetrating gaze to the arena of global politics to create this suspenseful portrait of a dangerous collision between cultures. Written before 9/11, this play premiered in New York in December 2001 and has had subsequent highly successful productions in London, Providence, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. This version incorporates all the playwright's changes and is now the definitive version of the text.
Download or read book The Theater of Tony Kushner written by James Fisher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Theater of Tony Kushner is a comprehensive portrait of the forty-year long career of dramatist Tony Kushner as playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and public intellectual and political activist. Following an introduction examining the influences of Kushner’s development as an artist, this updated second edition features individual chapters on his major plays, including A Bright Room Called Day, Hydriotaphia, or The Death of Dr. Browne, Angels in America, Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, Homebody/Kabul, Caroline, or Change, and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, along with chapters on Kushner’s adaptations, one-act plays, and screenplays, including his two Academy Award-nominated screenplays, Munich and Lincoln. A book for anyone interested in theater, film, literature, and the ways in which the past informs the present, this second edition of The Theater of Tony Kushner explores how his writings reflect key elements of American society, from politics and economics to race, gender, and spirituality, all with the hope of inspiring America to live up to its ideals.
Download or read book Theatre of the Ridiculous written by Kelly I. Aliano and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-11-14 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 Acts of Desire written by Sos Eltis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acts of Desire is a study of theatrical depictions of illicit female sexuality, from seduction and prostitution to bigamy and adultery, from the beginning of the nineteenth century through to the 1930s.
Download or read book The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 written by John Bishop and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 1987 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: The creative team responsible for a recent Broadway flop (in which three chorus girls were murdered by the mysterious Stage Door Slasher) assemble for a backer's audition of their new show at the Westchester estate of a wealthy angel.
