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Family of the f.p.: Notes on the Theatre of the Ridiculous

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Extract

This theatre has attracted little but unfavorable notice: it is slovenly, amateurish, silly, just boring; a put-on, really an actors’ lark; not art, certainly not serious art; a coterie occasion for a pariah in-group; by & for queers (not the nice kind, but drag queens & dykes & leather/motorbike/S&M hard trade); a display case for transvestites, pure camp, devoted to movie fetishism; anyhow just adolescent pornography; ritual enactment of an impotent humiliation of women (vicious, loveless); pointless, emotionally impactless, untheatrical; certainly devoid of social relevance; in sum, stupid & immoral.

The theatre of the ridiculous is an important theatre and theatre form.

I want to interpret here my impression of the theatre's theatrical impact, in the light of interviews with John Vaccaro, Charles Ludlam, Mary Woronow & some written pieces of Ronald Tavel's & Jack Smith's—keeping Freud, Sartre, Artaud, de Sade, Genet, Warhol & la pataphysique out of it.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 The Drama Review

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