Classics in Drag
In his short life, Charles Ludlam composed twenty-nine plays, including Camille, Stage Blood, Bluebeard, and his most famous work, The Mystery of Irma Vep, first performed in 1984. Nearly all of these plays were produced, directed, and performed by Ludlam himself for the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, based out of New York’s West Village. From 1967 to 1987, Ludlam and his Ridiculous actors attracted the attention of highbrow and lowbrow audiences, the avant-garde and the down-and-out, drag queens and New Yorker critics alike. Despite the reputation in his lifetime of being an “underground” artist, the plays of Charles Ludlam are currently published and performed around the world.
Those pristinely printed anthologies of his work that exist today betray Ludlam’s truly mad playwriting process. “The way I do plays is I announce the opening, and then I write the play,” Ludlam told an interviewer. “So it’s like a duel: you’re a coward if you don’t show up.” Ludlam would often come to rehearsal with an incomplete script and ask an actor, “Is there anything really wild you’d like to do on stage, like being whipped? I’ll write it in for you.” His plays were forged in the crucible of a largely non-professional but highly talented ensemble, where artistic and personal decisions freely mingled. Ludlam wrote The Mystery of Irma Vep as a “penny dreadful,” a farce for two actors that borrowed from Victorian melodrama, horror, and mystery. He also wrote it in the hopes of reconciling a falling-out between him and his long-time lover and collaborator, Everett Quinton. By all accounts, it worked—and so did the play, which ran for 331 performances, all performed by Ludlam and Quinton together. In the midst of the run, Ludlam wrote that Irma Vep was “perhaps the most exhausting challenge an actor could take on” and that “we are not the same actors we were when we began work on this piece.” The costume changes alone demanded so much speed and intricacy that certain VIP patrons were permitted to sit backstage to watch the team of costume assistants change Ludlam and Quinton’s garments between scenes, which they did with lightning precision (and lots of Velcro).
Ludlam’s work was called “queer theater” by supporters and detractors alike, a moniker he struggled with throughout his career. Despite Ludlam’s literary aspirations, there was a regular contingent of audience members who saw his cross-dressing performances—like his virtuoso portrayal of Marguerite in Camille—as pure drag entertainment. (Ludlam himself rejected the word “drag,” preferring to call himself a female impersonator. Quothe Ludlam: “I want to be taken seriously as an actress.”) On the other hand, the Ridiculous stage was the rare place where Ludlam and his performers could openly flaunt and celebrate their homosexuality before a general audience. “Gay people have always found a refuge in the arts, and the Ridiculous Theatre is notable for admitting it,” wrote Ludlam. “Nothing is concealed in the Ridiculous.”
Charles Ludlam died in 1987 of complications from AIDS, a condition he had kept secret right up until his death. He was 44. To the surprise of his supporters, his obituary made the front page of the New York Times. Two years later, the city renamed the small street outside his theater Charles Ludlam Lane.
Theater, Ludlam wrote, “is life itself—you give people two hours of your life, onstage. Time is all we have, and sharing that with people is different from just creating an object.” The time Ludlam spent on earth was brief but transformative. “Charles is ready for heaven,” it was said at his funeral. “But is heaven ready for Charles?”
Photograph of Charles Ludlam courtesy of the New York Public Library
–Drew Dir, Resident Dramaturg
