THE THEATRE OF THE RIDICULOUS

(2) : Ronald Tavel at 27 St. Marks Place, NYC, during the writing of his first screenplay, Tarzan of the Flicks, 1962

Ronald Tavel invented the designation Theatre of The Ridiculous to identify the vision and styles of what would be, to date, his more than forty produced stage plays.

While still in college and studying the Theatre of The Absurd, he asked himself, “What could come next? A theatre of The Ridiculous?” That mode in its satiric mood would shortly thereinafter manifest itself in a classroom CHRISTMAS SHOW, which his playwriting instructor ordered him to compose. The latter was so outraged by the production that he came close to flunking Tavel in playwriting.

When his first professional stage production, the two one-act plays, SHOWER and THE LIFE OF JUANITA CASTRO, were getting set to premiere on July 29, 1965 at the Coda Gallery on East 10th Street near Fourth Avenue in New York, Tavel felt the need for an overall title for the evening, since American audiences then tended to prefer a single experience as opposed to unrelated short pieces. He immediately decided that the name, The Theatre of The Ridiculous, would suit these one-acts and wrote a one-line manifesto for the program to justify his choice: “We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely preposterous.”

The plays opened to large crowds and positive reviews and were moved to a

(3) : The famous double-frame portrait from Warhol’s Fifty Fantasticks, 1964

commercial venue, the St. Mark’s Playhouse, on Second Avenue, in September of 1965. 

When loosely the same group of players, under John Vaccaro’s direction, and using the identification, Theatre of The Ridiculous, opened their third play in April 1966, Ronald Tavel’s THE LIFE OF LADY GODIVA, in a flight-up hall at 13 West 17th Street, the city objected to a space more than three steps above the pavement being called a theater. So Tavel, making capital of the pun, changed the company’s name to Play-House of The Ridiculous.

In the autumn of that year, the company’s next production, the Tavel one-acts, SCREEN TEST and INDIRA GANDHI’S DARING DEVICE, became a hit, a cause celebre, and an international scandal (see, The New York Times, March 29, 1967, p. 37, Foreign Minister, etc. by Joseph Lelyveld; and The Village Voice, March 9, 1967, Appeal to Washington by Don McNeill). A division in the group began to surface in the matter of how to handle this affair.

(4) : The wicked smile

“GORILLA QUEEN is the craziest play I have ever seen, and that includes other plays by Ronald Tavel…. It is beyond art, beyond obscenity, beyond belief.”
-Michael Smith, The Best of Off-Off Broadway (E.P. Dutton & Co., New York: 1969)

Tavel then set about to display his full playwriting skills, but when he offered a long and elaborate work, GORILLA QUEEN, to the company, Vaccaro felt he couldn’t direct it. Instead, Harvey (or Doc Harv) Tavel directed his brother’s one-act KITCHENETTE and a revival of JUANITA in January and February 1967 as a replacement, and a quick way to pay the group’s bills. This production earned the Play-House its first Obie Award (for Best Actor for Eddie McCarty). Then the brothers left the Play-House and Tavel offered GORILLA QUEEN to the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square. The Church opened the epic as its Easter presentation to a rave review from the NY Times and sold it in three days to a commercial run at the Martinique Theater. Tavel showcased another epic, ARENAS OF LUTECIA, at the Judson the following spring. This co-starred the statuesque beauty, Mary Woronov, and Edie McCarty.

(5) : Doc Harv (left) and Ron Tavel on the Circle Line, NYC, 1965

In the meantime, Vaccaro turned to the actor Charles Ludlam for a playwright, and when these two quarreled, Ludlam withdrew and formed a group called the Gloxina. Dissatisfied with that name and at an imaginary loss, Ludlam returned to the Tavel label, Ridiculous. He renamed his group Ridiculous Theatrical Company, apparently never seeing the self-deprecation in using the technical noun as an adjective.

Doc Harv Tavel then directed Tavel’s one-act play VINYL at the Caffe Cino (1967) with dancer Ray Edwards, singer Mike St. Shaw, and Mary Woronov in the role of the sadistic physician. Ronald Tavel’s next full-length, a musical called BOY ON THE STRAIGHT-BACK CHAIR, was presented commercially at the prestigious American Place Theater (1969) where it won an Obie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting.

(6) : Tavel getting into makeup for the role of the director in The Life of Juanita Castro (actress Lola Pashalinski in background), 1967

Another Obie Award for Best Play went to BIGFOOT (1972, at Theater Genesis, in the St. Marks on the Bouwerie Church, Second Avenue and 10th Street). This work is Tavel’s only formal tragedy. He and many critics consider it his finest play and it earned him the position of First Artist-in-Residence at The Yale University Divinity School in 1975. He was reappointed to that post in 1977 for his lyrical drama, GAZELLE BOY. Both BIGFOOT and GAZELLE BOY extend the meaning, subject matter, and dramatic scope of The Ridiculous.

(7) : Norman Glick and Doc Harv in revival of Tavel’s Shower, 1968

Ronald Tavel never registered the label, Theatre of The Ridiculous, at City Hall, believing that if he alone used it, it might well be forgotten.  But he did not anticipate that the three or more companies (including one in Paris), which subsequently adopted the label, would merely imitate some of the stylistic, surface qualities of his early satiric stage work: and never probe their, or his, later themes – mythic, religious, political, or otherwise.

Other accounts of the coining of the phrase, Theatre of The Ridiculous, appear on the Internet and in various publications.  But any account differing from the above is patently false.

AS ANDY WARHOL’S FACTORY WRITER

(8) : Mary Woronov reprises Jo, her signature role, in Kitchenette, 1971

            Ronald Tavel wrote his first (verse) play, TOLTEC, while still a teenager.  He also wrote two children’s plays when he collaborated with the late pianist and actor, Eddie McCarty.  But he had no actual stage production until midway into his collaboration with the artist and filmmaker, Andy Warhol (November 1964 to March 1967).  Andy sought out Tavel for his upcoming experiments in sound movies (Tavel’s voice was said to be  “a mixture of cat and cobra”); and following his voiceover in HARLOT  (where he directs a three-man conversation) and his posing for a Living Portrait in December 1964 (listed by MoMA as the RONALD TAVEL SCREEN TEST), Warhol asked him to write promotionals, diaries, and screenplays.  Tavel then wrote the only screenplays (14, including the THEIR TOWN and HANOI HANNA sequences in THE CHELSEA GIRLS), which were actually used in what the Whitney Museum of American Art now defines as the real Warhol films.  He wrote four more scripts for Andy (SHOWER, KAHUNA!, WORDS FOR MARY WORONOV, and INDIRA), which were never filmed; and appears as a performer in an additional four.  A number of these film scripts were later converted into stage plays.

            Tavel appears in four film documentaries on Andy Warhol, including the as-yet unreleased one being shot by Ric Burns. SCREEN TEST #2 (written, directed by, and starring Tavel and Mario Montez) has become one of the most rented movies in MoMA’s Circulating Film Library due almost entirely to a study of it by theorist Douglas Crimp: “Mario Montez: for Shame” in Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory (New York: Routledge, 2002; also in German, Spanish, and Polish).

AS COLLABORATOR WITH JACK SMITH

(9) : Ron Tavel on the road, Missouri, 1972

            There currently is a growing interest in Ronald Tavel’s collaboration with the photographer, filmmaker, and architect Jack Smith (b. 1932- d. 1989). Tavel knew Smith for twenty-two years and worked on and off with him over that period: as a model for his still-photography, set and soundman for FLAMING CREATURES, writer of the inter-titles for BUZZARDS OVER BAGDAD, and actor in the 1984 stage play, ATTACK OF THE BRASSIERE MAIDENS. Tavel appears discussing his relationship with Smith in a Mary Jordan/Ken Wayne Peralta film documentary on Jack Smith, (working title: JACK SMITH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS), set for release in 2006.

IN ASIA

            Ronald Tavel lived in North Africa when he was young and his first published novel, STREET OF STAIRS (Olympia Press, 1968: in English and German), is set in

(10) : Ron Tavel, Chicago, 1980

Morocco and Rio de Oro.  When he left his position as First Playwright-in-Residence at Cornell University (1980-81), Tavel traveled to Asia and stayed for a year in Bangkok with his school chum, the late linguist Ronald Kutny.  He received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship to Taipei in 1993 and taught contemporary poetry and screen and play writing at National Taiwan University until August 1995.  His melodrama, THE UNDERSTUDY, is published in Mandarin as well as English.  He returned to Bangkok for a brief stay in 1995 and to Taipei for one month in 1996.  In 1997, he went to Bangkok once again to work on a new novel, CHAIN, and he has remained living there until the present.

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