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 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 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 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 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 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 Feeling the Future at Christian End Time Performances written by Jill C. Stevenson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Christian depictions of the End allow spectators to experience--and feel--their place within the future history of humankind
Download or read book My Kitchen Wars written by Betty Fussell and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fierce and funny memoir of kitchen and bedroom from James Beard Award winner Betty Fussell A survivor of the domestic revolutions that turned American television sets from Leave It to Beaver to The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Julia Child’s The French Chef, food historian and journalist Betty Fussell has spotlighted the changes in American culture through food over the last half century in nearly a dozen books. In this witty and candid autobiographical mock epic, Fussell survives a motherless household during the Great Depression, gets married to the well-known writer and war historian Paul Fussell after World War II, goes through a divorce, and finally escapes to New York City in her mid-fifties, batterie de cuisine intact. My Kitchen Wars is a revelation of the author’s lifelong love affair with food—cooking it, eating it, and sharing it—no matter where or with whom she finds herself. From Princeton to Heidelberg and from London to Provence, Fussell ladles out food, sex, and travel with her wooden spoon, welcoming all who come to the table.
Download or read book This Is Not My Memoir written by André Gregory and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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?
Download or read book The Changing Room written by Laurence Senelick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The answers to these questions - and much, much more - are to be found in The Changing Room , which traces the origins and variations of theatrical cross-dressing through the ages and across cultures. It examines: * tribal rituals and shamanic practices in the Balkans and Chinese-Tibet * the gender-bending elements of Greek and early Christian religion * the homosexual appeal of the boy actor on the traditional stage of China, Japan and England * the origins of the dame comedian, the principal boy, the glamour drag artiste and the male impersonator * artists such as David Bowie, Boy George, Charles Ludlam, Dame Edna Everage, Lily Savage, Candy Darling, Julian Clary and the New York Dolls. Lavishly illustrated with unusual and rare pictures, this is the first ever cross-cultural study of theatrical transvestism. It is a must for anyone interested in cross-dressing, theatre, and gender.
Download or read book The Bodies of Others written by Selby Wynn Schwartz and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bodies of Others explores the politics of gender in motion. From drag ballerinas to faux queens, and from butoh divas to the club mothers of modern dance, the book delves into four decades of drag dances on American stages. Drag dances take us beyond glittery one-liners and into the spaces between gender norms. In these backstage histories, dancers give their bodies over to other selves, opening up the category of realness. The book maps out a drag politics of embodiment, connecting drag dances to queer hope, memory, and mourning. There are aging étoiles, midnight shows, mystical séances, and all of the dust and velvet of divas in their dressing-rooms. But these forty years of drag dances are also a cultural history, including Mark Morris dancing the death of Dido in the shadow of AIDS, and the swans of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo sketching an antiracist vision for ballet. Drawing on queer theory, dance history, and the embodied practices of dancers themselves, The Bodies of Others examines the ways in which drag dances undertake the work of a shared queer and trans politics.
Download or read book The Queerest Art written by Alisa Solomon and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2002-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Queerest Art rereads the history of performance as a celebration and critique of dissident sexualities, exploring the politics of pleasure and the pleasure of politics that drive the theatre.
Download or read book An Ideal Theater written by Todd London and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Ideal Theater is a wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theatre movement as told by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator, Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future, and includes contributions from: Jane Addams • William Ball • Julian Beck • Herbert Blau • Angus Bowmer • Bernard Bragg • Maurice Browne • Robert Brustein • Alison Carey • Joseph Chaikin • Harold Clurman • Dudley Cocke • Alice Lewisohn Crowley • Gordon Davidson • R. G. Davis • Doris Derby • W. E. B. Du Bois • Zelda Fichandler • Hallie Flanagan • Eva Le Gallienne • Robert E. Gard • Susan Glaspell • André Gregory • Tyrone Guthrie • John Houseman • Jules Irving • Margo Jones • Frederick H. Koch • Lawrence Langner • W. McNeil Lowry • Charles Ludlam • Judith Malina • Theodore Mann • Gilbert Moses • Michaela O’Harra • John O’Neal • Joseph Papp • Robert Porterfield • José Quintero • Bill Rauch • Bernard Sahlins • Richard Schechner • Peter Schumann • Maurice Schwartz • Gary Sinise • Ellen Stewart • Lee Strasberg • Luis Miguel Valdez • Nina Vance • Douglas Turner Ward As well as the founding visions of theatres from across the country: The Actors Studio • The Actor's Workshop • Alley Theatre • American Conservatory Theater • American Repetory Theater • Arena Stage • Barter Theatre • Bread and Puppet Theater • The Carolina Playmakers • The Chicago Little Theater • Circle in the Square Theatre • The Civic Repertory Theatre • Cornerstone Theater Company • The Federal Theatre Project • Ford Foundation Program in Humanities and the Arts • The Free Southern Theater • The Group Theatre • The Hull-House Dramatic Association • KRIGWA Players • The Living Theatre • La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club • The Mark Taper Forum • The Mercury Theatre • Minnesota Theater Company (Guthrie Theater) • The National Theatre of the Deaf • The Negro Ensemble Company • The Negro Theatre Project, Federal Theatre Project • The Neighborhood Playhouse • New Dramatists • The New York Shakespeare Festival • The Open Theater • Oregon Shakespeare Festival • The Performance Group • The Provincetown Players • The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center • The Ridiculous Theatrical Company • Roadside Theater • The San Francisco Mime Troupe • The Second City • Steppenwolf Theatre Company • El Teatro Campesino • Theater '47 • The Theatre Guild • The Theatre of the Living Arts • The Washington Square Players • The Wisconsin Idea Theater • Yale Repertory Theatre • The Yiddish Art Theatre Todd London is in his 18th season as artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation’s oldest center for the creative and professional development of American playwrights. In 2009 Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theater field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” He’s the author of The Importance of Staying Earnest: Writings from Inside the American Theatre, 1988-2013 (NoPassport Press), Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (with Ben Pesner, Theatre Development Fund), The Artistic Home (TCG), and The World’s Room, a novel (Steerforth Press), among others. His column, “A Lover’s Guide to American Playwrights,” tributes to contemporary
Download or read book Living dead in Denmark 2006 written by and published by Broadway Play Publishing In. This book was released on with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Colder Than Here written by Laura Wade and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobody can ignore the fact that Myra is dying, but in the meantime, life goes on. There are boilers to be fixed, cats to be fed, and the perfect funeral to be planned. As a mother researches burial spots and biodegradable coffins, her family is finally forced to communicate with her and each other as they face up to the future. A dark comedy about death and life going on.
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.
