Of the Ridiculous and Ronald Tavel

How sweet it is that International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT) falls on the birthday of playwright Ronald Tavel (1936-2009).

Tavel is an important figure in 20th century cultural history, if for no other reason than that he coined the phrase “Theatre of the Ridiculous”, thus spawning a movement within a movement within a movement. The idea came to him when he was in college; the idea was to bring something into existence that it was at least one notch more extreme than Theatre of the Absurd. What was arrived at had a lot to do with drag, camp, burlesque, classicism, and (no shade, for I hold it in high esteem) community theatre. The community in this case being the gay community ostensibly, but also their allies and honestly anyone with an open mind who likes a good belly laugh. He started out working with Jack Smith, then acted in and wrote scripts for films at Andy Warhol’s factory. This work led to co-founding John Vaccaro’s Theatre of the Ridiculous, which led to another offshoot, Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, as well as other related cousins such as The Cockettes, and John Waters’ Dreamlanders.

Tavel was a Brooklyn native and graduated from Brooklyn College before getting a masters at the University of Wyoming. An early novel, the polyphonic Street of Stairs was published in 1968, several years after it was written. He contributed set design and crew work to Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) His stage plays included Shower (1965), The Life of Juanita Castro (1965), The Life of Lady Godiva (1966), Screen Test (1967), Indira Gandhi’s Daring Device (1967), Kitchenette (1967), Gorilla Queen (1967), Vinyl (1967), Arenas of Lutecia (1968), the OBIE winning Boy on the Straight-Backed Chair (1969), Bigfoot (1972, which also won an OBIE), and Gazelle Boy (1977). Some of these were turned into Warhol films. He also wrote for the Warhol movies Harlot (1964), Poor Little Rich Girl (1965), Space (1965), Horse (1965), More Milk Evette (1966), Lupe (1966), Chelsea Girls (1966), Hedy (1966), and Superboy (1966), acting in a number of them as well. Actors he worked with included Edie Sedgwick, Mario Montez, Mary Woronov, International Velvet, Brigid Berlin, Nico, et al.

Starting in the ’70s, Tavel found himself on the receiving of more awards, commissions and academic positions. I am beginning to suspect that THIS is what became of the original off-off Broadway movement. SUCCESS scattered the movers and shakers to the four winds. Tavel wound up as far away from the Lower East Side as it was possible to be: he spent the last years of his life in Bangkok!