Charles Ludlam Lives!

Charles Ludlam Lives! PDF Author: Sean Edgecomb
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472053558
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
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.

Charles Ludlam Lives!

Charles Ludlam Lives! PDF Author: Sean Edgecomb
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472053558
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Ridiculous!

Ridiculous! PDF Author: David Kaufman
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557835888
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Charles Ludlam
Publisher: Theatre Communications Grou
ISBN: 9781559360418
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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

Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company

Charles Ludlam and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company PDF Author: Rick Roemer
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786445103
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

Stage Blood

Stage Blood PDF Author: Charles Ludlam
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573690693
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description


Theatre of the Ridiculous

Theatre of the Ridiculous PDF Author: Bonnie Marranca
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
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.

The Mystery of Irma Vep

The Mystery of Irma Vep PDF Author: Charles Ludlam
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573640469
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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

Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances

Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances PDF Author: Jill Stevenson
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472132857
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
How Christian depictions of the End allow spectators to experience--and feel--their place within the future history of humankind

Legendary Children

Legendary Children PDF Author: Tom Fitzgerald
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525506438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A definitive deep-dive into queer history and culture with hit reality show RuPaul's Drag Race as a touchstone, by the creators of the pop culture blog Tom and Lorenzo NPR's Best Books of the Year 2020 pick A New York Times New & Noteworthy book One of Logo/NewNowNext's "11 Queer Books We Can't Wait to Read This Spring" From the singular voices behind Tom and Lorenzo comes the ultimate guide to all-things RuPaul's Drag Race and its influence on modern LGBTQ culture. Legendary Children centers itself around the idea that not only is RuPaul's Drag Race the queerest show in the history of television, but that RuPaul and company devised a show that serves as an actual museum of queer cultural and social history, drawing on queer traditions and the work of legendary figures going back nearly a century. In doing so, Drag Race became not only a repository of queer history and culture, but also an examination and illustration of queer life in the modern age. It is a snapshot of how LGBTQ folks live, struggle, work, and reach out to one another--and how they always have--and every bit of it is tied directly to Drag Race. Each chapter is an examination of a specific aspect of the show--the Werk Room, the Library, the Pit Crew, the runway, the Untucked lounge, the Snatch Game--that ties to a specific aspect of queer cultural history and/or the work of certain legendary figures in queer cultural history.

My Kitchen Wars

My Kitchen Wars PDF Author: Betty Fussell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453218432
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
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.