Ridiculous!: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam

by David Kaufman (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $17.63

  (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