When Charles Ludlam died in 1987, only weeks after being diagnosed with AIDS, the headline on his obituary in The New York Times read: "Charles Ludlam, 44, Avant-Garde Artist of Theater, Is Dead." Ludlam would likely have been displeased if he could have read it. The playwright-actor-director-producer considered the avant-garde as calcified, and his way at pushing at theatrical boundaries was to aim for the ridiculous. "Avant-garde art is in beige, black, white, and grey," Ludlam said in 1978. "Ridiculous theater is in color. It's hedonistic. It's alchemy. It's the transformation of what is in low esteem into the highest form of expression."
In the case of The Mystery of Irma Vep, by far the biggest commercial success of his career, Ludlam looked to B movies about mummies, vampires, and werewolves, as well as to more upper-crust fare such as Rebecca and Wuthering Heights for this deconstruction-celebration. But while many of Ludlam's plays were shoestring epics, Irma Vep made do with just two actors �" albeit playing eight (or more) characters of alternating genders involving 35 quick costume changes.
With Irma Vep, Jonathan Moscone is directing his final show for California Shakespeare Company as its artistic director. In this production, beginning performances Aug. 12, the roles created in 1984 by Ludlam and his personal and professional partner Everett Quinton are being played by Danny Scheie and Liam Vincent. The licensing agreement emphatically states that both roles be cast with performers of the same gender to make sure that cross-dressing remains a part of the alchemy.
Ludlam founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967, and while drag, camp, and parody were certainly parts of his productions, he always believed they transcended all that in ways that audiences didn't always recognize. He wanted to move the audience to tears in Camille, even as he played the title character in drag with chest hair showing, but there was sometimes laughter in the final scenes from audiences primed only for the camp elements. "It's enough to drive a person crazy," he said, "the distance between what you're experiencing while creating it and what the audience feels. What they want it to be is not necessarily what I'm doing."
While Ludlam could be wildly comic on stage, he always talked seriously, even scholarly, about his work and the Ridiculous Theater movement. Here are some of his takes, condensed from multiple interviews, on how his career developed and issues he confronted along the way. Bear in mind that these words were spoken in the 1970s and 80s, and attitudes are reflections of their times.
On gay theater: "Most gay theater either apologizes or pleads for mercy. What I do is not gay theater �" it's something much worse. I don't ask to be tolerated. I don't mind being intolerable. Second, proselytizing lifestyles is a Brechtian thing, in the tradition of advertising and propaganda, which doesn't have anything to do with the absolutely rigorous individualism that goes into our work."
On studying drama: "I thought acting was the priesthood of the theater. But the teachers at Hofstra started telling me I should write and direct rather than act. I took terrible offense at this. Now I realize I was just being silly. Those four years were a very turbulent time for me. I was rebellious against my teachers, so many of whose ideas I found offensive. I felt I had to create a new theater, but I didn't completely recognize what that meant."
On discovering drag: His high school drama teacher had warned him that his effeminate mannerisms could destroy his career, and the warning was repeated when he decided to appear as Norma Desmond in a play titled Screen Test in 1966. "I had never done drag on stage, and I was nervous. But it just suddenly sprung into being for me, and with absolutely no preparation, I went on as Norma Desmond. The disguise, the costume, freed me, and made me do things I could never have done myself. But it's not easy to play a woman. I often think it must be hard for a woman to play a woman."
On himself in drag: "Drag is something today people are prejudiced against, because women are considered inferior beings. So to defiantly do that, and that I'll put my whole soul and being into creating this woman and give her everything I have, and the most taboo thing to do is experience feminine emotions, and to take myself seriously in the face of ridicule, that is the highest turn of the statement. It allows audiences to experience the universality of emotions, rather than believe women are one species and men are another."
On comedy vs. drama: "Humor is held in very low esteem today. The whole idea of humorous art is prostituted to such an extent that it can't be taken seriously, that there can't be serious humor. The whole idea of seriousness is awful to me. It doesn't really imply gravity or profundity. It implies decorum, behaving yourself, and that's what I don't like about it."
On 1940s film siren Maria Montez: "With Maria Montez, as with pornography or anything held in low esteem, it's a cultural prejudice. It's not inherently low. She gave the films a conviction, which was a fabulous quality to impose on something most people wouldn't care for. The things those movies have that movies today don't have is actors sort of winking at you from behind their masks telling you they don't mean it. Not protecting themselves, not afraid to look foolish, not afraid to be thought mad. If actors could seem to be possessed by their roles, they could justify any kind of theatrics."
On ideals: "You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low."
The Mystery of Irma Vep will run Aug. 12-Sept. 6 at Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda. Tickets are $36-$84. Call (510) 548-9666 or go to calshakes.org.