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John Vaccaro
Theatre of the Ridiculous is a theatrical genre that began in New York City in the 1960s.Bottoms, Stephen J. Chapter 11: "The Play-House of the Ridiculous: Beyond Absurdity". ''Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Beginnings of the genre The phrase "Theatre of the Ridiculous" was created in 1965 by actor and director Ronald Tavel to describe his own work, which was later recognized as the beginning of the genre. Referencing Martin Esslin's concept of a Theatre of the Absurd, Tavel promoted the first Ridiculous performances with the manifesto: "We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely preposterous." Theatre of the Ridiculous broke from the dominant trends in theater of naturalistic acting and realistic settings. The genre employed a broad acting style, often with surrealistic stage settings and props, and frequently made a conscious effort to be shocking or disturbing. R ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city.
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Charles Ludlam
Charles Braun Ludlam (April 12, 1943May 28, 1987) was an American actor, director, and playwright. Biography Early life Ludlam was born in Floral Park, New York, the son of Marjorie (née Braun) and Joseph William Ludlam. He was raised in Greenlawn, New York, and attended Harborfields High School. He was openly gay, and performed in plays with the Township Theater Group, a community theatre in Huntington, and worked backstage at the Red Barn Theater, a summer stock theatre in Northport. During his senior year of high school, Ludlam directed, produced, and performed plays with a group of friends, students from Huntington, Northport, Greenlawn, and Centerport. Their "Students Repertory Theatre", housed in the loft studio beneath the Posey School of Dance on Main Street in Northport, seated an audience of 25, and was sold out for every performance. Their repertoire included Kan Kikuchi's ''Madman on the Roof''; '' Theatre of the Soul''; a readers' theatre adaptation of E ...
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Leee Black Childers
Leee Black Childers (July 24, 1945 – April 6, 2014) was an American photographer, writer and rock music manager, who "recorded the legacy of a theatrical cross over between rock music and gay culture." Born Lee Black Childers in Jefferson County, Kentucky he started to spell his name with three rather than two "e"s as a child. Biography Leee Black Childers was born on July 24, 1945, in or near Louisville, Kentucky, to Ova Childers, a railroad switchman, and Harriet Black, who later went by Kathlyn Black Stone. He had two brothers, Larry and Henry. He attended Kentucky Southern College before moving to San Francisco, California, and later, in 1968, to New York City where he witnessed the Stonewall Riots. He began taking photographs of drag queens and was encouraged by Andy Warhol to work as a photographer, gaining a reputation for his portraits of the artists, musicians, and others who passed through the Factory in New York. Childers photographed the nightlife and later the pu ...
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Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, largest, and average area per state and territory, smallest county by area in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's Economy of New York City, economic and Government of New York City, administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, Media in New York City, media, and show business, entertainment capital of the world. Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonization of the Americas, D ...
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La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (sometimes abbreviated as La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1961 by African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer Ellen Stewart. Located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, the theater began in the basement boutique where Stewart sold her fashion designs. Stewart turned the space into a theater at night, focusing on the work of young playwrights. Background Stewart started La MaMa as a theatre dedicated to the playwright and primarily producing new plays, including works by Paul Foster, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy, Harvey Fierstein, and Rochelle Owens. La MaMa also became an international ambassador for Off-Off-Broadway theatre by touring downtown theatre abroad during the 1960s.Bottoms, Steven J. ''Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. L ...
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Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne)
Isabelle Collin Dufresne (6 September 1935 – 14 June 2014), known professionally as Ultra Violet, was a French-American artist, author, and both a colleague of Andy Warhol and one of his so-called Superstars. Earlier in her career, she worked for and studied with surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Dufresne lived and worked in New York City, and also had a studio in Nice, France. Early life Isabelle Collin Dufresne was brought up in a strict religious upper-middle-class family, but she rebelled at an early age. She was instructed at a Catholic school, and then a reform school. In 1953, she received a BA in Art at ''Le Sacré Cœur'' in Grenoble, France. She soon left France to live with an older sister in New York City. Salvador Dalí and New York City In 1954, after a meeting with Salvador Dalí, she became his "muse", pupil, studio assistant, and lover in both Port Lligat, Spain, and in New York City. Later, she would recall, ''"I realized that I was 'surreal', which I ...
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Ondine (actor)
Robert Olivo (June 16, 1937 – August 28, 1989), better known by his stage name Ondine, was an American actor. He is best known for appearing in a series of films in the mid-1960s by Andy Warhol, whom he claimed to have met in 1961 at an orgy: Ondine was the focus of Warhol's book, ''a, A Novel'', based on transcripts of Ondine and others. He appeared in films made by his lover, Roger Jacoby, ''Dream Sphinx Opera'', ''L'Amico Fried's Glamorous Friends'', and ''Kunst Life''. In later years, he supported himself by showing Warhol films and delivering a lecture on his days as a Warhol superstar on the college circuit. He died of AIDS-related liver disease in Queens, New York in 1989, aged 52. He was portrayed in the film ''I Shot Andy Warhol'' by Michael Imperioli. Filmography * ''Batman Dracula'' (1964) * ''Couch (film), Couch'' (1964) * ''Raw Weekend'' (1964) * ''Afternoon (film), Afternoon'' (1965) * ''Restaurant (1965 film), Restaurant'' (1965) * ''Vinyl (1965 film), Vinyl'' ( ...
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Taylor Mead
Taylor Mead (December 31, 1924 – May 8, 2013) was an American writer, actor and performer. Mead appeared in several of Andy Warhol's underground films filmed at Warhol's Factory, including ''Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of'' (1963) and '' Taylor Mead's Ass'' (1964). Career Born in Detroit, Michigan and raised by divorced parents mostly in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe, he appeared in Ron Rice's beat classic '' The Flower Thief'' (1960), in which he "traipses with elfin glee through a lost San Francisco of smoke-stuffed North Beach cafés ..." Film critic P. Adams Sitney called ''The Flower Thief'' "the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema." Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman called Mead "the first underground movie star." In 1967, Taylor Mead played a part in the surrealistic play '' Desire Caught by the Tail'' by Pablo Picasso when it was set for the first time in France at a festival in Saint-Tropez, among others with Ultra Violet. In the mid- ...
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Mary Woronov
Mary Woronov (born December 8, 1943) is an American actress, writer, and Figurative art, figurative painter. She is primarily known as a cult film star because of her work with Andy Warhol and her roles in Roger Corman's cult films. Woronov has appeared in over 80 movies and on stage at Lincoln Center and off-Broadway productions as well as numerous times in mainstream American TV series, such as ''Charlie's Angels'' and ''Knight Rider (1982 TV series), Knight Rider''. She frequently co-starred with friend Paul Bartel; the pair appeared in 17 films together, often playing a married couple. Early life Woronov was born December 8, 1943, in the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, while it was temporarily operating as the Ream General Hospital during World War II. Woronov was born Preterm birth, premature and doctors initially did not believe she would survive infancy. At a young age, she relocated with her mother to Brooklyn Heights in New York City, where her mother married Vict ...
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Bouwerie Lane Theatre
The Bouwerie Lane Theatre is a former bank building which became an Off-Broadway theatre, located at 330 Bowery at Bond Street in Manhattan, New York City. It is located in the NoHo Historic District. The cast-iron building, which was constructed from 1873-1874, was designed by Henry Engelbert in the Italianate style for the Atlantic Savings Bank, which became the Bond Street Saving Bank before the building was completed., p.62 When the bank failed in 1879, the building was sold to the German Exchange Bank, which served the German immigrant community. Prior to the 1960s, the building was used for the storage of fabrics. In 1963, the building was converted into a theater by Honey Waldman, who produced several plays there. From 1974 to 2006, it was the home of the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre. Among the many plays and musicals that were produced at the theatre, the first was ''The Immoralist'' (1963) with Frank Langella, '' Dames at Sea'' (1968), '' Night and Day'' (2000) by T ...
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Santa Claus
Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or Santa) is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Christmas Eve. Christmas elves are said to make the gifts in Santa's workshop, while flying reindeer pull his sleigh through the air. The popular conception of Santa Claus originates from folklore traditions surrounding the 4th-century Christian bishop Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children. Saint Nicholas became renowned for his reported generosity and secret gift-giving. The image of Santa Claus shares similarities with the English figure of Father Christmas, and they are both now popularly regarded as the same person. Santa is generally depicted as a portly, jolly, white- bearded man, often with spectacles, wearing a red coat with white fur collar and cuffs, white-fur-cuffed red trousers, a red hat trimmed with white fur, a b ...
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Svengali
Svengali () is a character in the novel ''Trilby'' which was first published in 1894 by George du Maurier. Svengali is a Jewish man who seduces, dominates and exploits Trilby, a young half-Irish girl, and makes her into a famous singer. Definition After the book's publication in 1894, the word " svengali" has come to refer to a person who, with evil intent, dominates, manipulates and controls another. In court, the "Svengali defence" is a legal tactic that portrays the defendant as a pawn in the scheme of a greater, and more influential, criminal mastermind. Novel Svengali is a stereotypical antisemitic portrayal of an Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jew, complete with "bold, black, beady Jew's eyes" and a "hoarse, rasping, nasal, throaty rook's caw, his big yellow teeth baring themselves in a mongrel canine snarl". He is continually filthy and yet still "clean enough to suit (his own) kind". George Orwell wrote that Svengali, who while cleverer than the Englishmen, is evil ...
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