OCTOBER 29, 1993 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 15

ENTERTAINMENT

Nothing is hidden when making the normal ridiculous

by Barry Daniels

I'll never forget the last time I saw the late Charles Ludlam. It was a warm summer evening in Central Park. Mottled light was filtering through the trees in front of the Delacorte Theatre where I was waiting for the free Shakespeare in the Park performance to begin. I remember seeing a goodlooking, dark-featured, oddly charismatic, balding man in a stunning deep purple suit. "That's Charles Ludlam," I thought and kept my cool New York attitude, registering his presence but not acknowledging it. Three months later he was diagnosed as having AIDS, and nine months later on May 28, 1987, at the age of 44, he died. How I regret that I didn't give in to my heart that night and go up to him and thank him for so many exhilarating evenings in the theater, for so much liberating laughter. He was one of the supreme comic geniuses of our times-playwright, director, actor, designer-whose Ridiculous Theatrical Company helped create a truly Queer Theater in New York.

Ludlam said that in his hands, "comedy becomes the tool of the deviant and the original, the unique, the forbidden. It punishes the status quo, changes the way they think about things. Ridiculous makes the normal ridiculous, makes the normal, the conventional and the standard the figure of fun. The deviant, the eccentric and the original minority triumphs over the norm.” Trying to distinguish his theater from gay theater, he argued that "gay theater is really a political movement to show that gay people can be admirable, responsible members of the community. It shows their problems. I don't do that. 'Queer Theater' embraces more variation, and the possibility of something being odd or peculiar rather than just simply homosexuality." Trying to describe the role of gay people in the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, he noted that “Gay people have always found a refuge in the arts, and the Ridiculous theater is notable for admitting it. The people in it-and it is a very sophisticated theater, culturally-never dream of hiding anything about themselves that they feel is honest and true and the best part of themselves. Nothing is concealed in the Ridiculous."

Ludlam's first New York appearance was as Peeping Tom in Tavel's The Life of Lady Godiva, staged by John Vaccaro at the Playhouse of the Ridiculous in 1966, where his first extant play, Big Hotel was performed in the same year. Ludlam split from Vaccaro in 1967 and created the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. For the next 20 years Ludlam developed his unique comic vision in a series of productions that earned him fame if not riches. The volume of his Collected Plays includes twenty-nine texts, and at 905 pages, it is a hefty volume. I like to think of it as the bible of queer theater. If you've seen

Ludlam's work, dipping into the volume will involve a process of remembering all the physical stage details of his work that cannot be captured in print: his supremely lunatic frenzy as the mad scientist con-

ducting experiments on humans in an attempt to create a third sex in Bluebeard (1970); or the

image of Ludlam in a décolleté gown, his thick black chest hair pouring over the bodice, in the title role of Camille (1973); or his entrance dressed in a child's pajamas with feet, bunny ears and tail as Mr. Foufas in his take-off on Molière, The Bourgeois AvantGarde (1983).

My own most vivid memory is of seeing The

秘辣藝

Mystery of Irma Vep in Everett Quinton (left) and the late Charles Ludlam as they appeared in the Ridiculous Theatrical 1984, in the little baseCompany's production of Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep.

ment theater at One

Sheridan Square-the company's permanent home since 1978. I was with my 10 year old son. I don't think the two of us had ever

laughed so hard together for such a long period of time. Ludlam's anarchic and completely free imagination has a childlike exuberance about it that has the power to take us all back to the stage in life before social pressures start to "civilize" us. I'm sure my son didn't understand all the layers of Ludlam's comedy, which parodies gothic novels and cheap horror films, and farcically explodes any notions of normal sexuality. But he could respond without reserve to Ludlam and Everett Quinton's comic genius as performers and to the sheer theatrical delight of the quick costume changes in this play in which the two actors play all the parts. In retrospect I think about this performance as a consummate act of love between the two men, who were lovers in real life, and between them and the art and craft of theater.

The essence of Ludlam's vision can be found in his aphorism, “Theater is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of the imagination, not the other way around." The Ridiculous Theatrical Company continues in this spirit at its Greenwich Village theater in New York with Quinton as Artistic Director. Since Ludlam's death they have produced new work as well as staged revivals of Ludlam's plays. Their current season opened on October 28 (previews through November 7) with a revival of Ludlam's 1983 farce, How to Write a Play, a loosely autobiographical story about what

happens when he must write a play by the next day or lose the grant money given to his theater. Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 7 pm and 10 pm. Tickets are $25. For reservations telephone 212-691-2271.

Cleveland area audiences have the opportunity to see local productions of Ludlam's plays, The Mystery of Irma Vep (at Akron University) and Love's Tangled Web (at The

Working Theatre). The Complete Plays of Charles Ludlam was published by Harper and Row in 1989. Steven Samuels has edited a volume of Ludlam's essays and opinions, Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly, published by the Theatre Communications Group in 1992 (from which the citations in the article were taken). Both books are available in paperbound editions.

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