Ridiculous!
Ridiculous!

Author: David Kaufman

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 9781557836373

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(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

Ridiculous Theatre
Ridiculous Theatre

Author: Charles Ludlam

Publisher: Theatre Communications Grou

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781559360418

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Never widely available in his lifetime, Ludlam's essays and opinions of theatre reveal a complex mind focused on theatrical invention.

Theatre of the Ridiculous
Theatre of the Ridiculous

Author: Bonnie Marranca

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780801856983

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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.

Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company
Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company

Author: Rick Roemer

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2010-07-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786445103

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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.

Theatre of the Ridiculous
Theatre of the Ridiculous

Author: Kelly I. Aliano

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-10-30

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1476634726

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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.

Charles Ludlam Lives!
Charles Ludlam Lives!

Author: Sean Edgecomb

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2017-06-15

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0472053558

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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.

The Ridiculous Darkness
The Ridiculous Darkness

Author: Wolfram Lotz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 1786827492

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“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.

The Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd

Author: Martin Esslin

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2009-04-02

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0307548015

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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.

Enter Laughing
Enter Laughing

Author: Joseph Stein

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 9780573608643

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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.

The Traveling Companion and Other Plays
The Traveling Companion and Other Plays

Author: Tennessee Williams

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780811217088

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"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.