NOTES ON STYLE - BURLESQUE, VAUDEVILLE, THEATER OF THE RIDICULOUS

BURLESQUE Any imitative work that derives humor from an incongruous contrast between style and subject. A burlesque literary performance is intentionally ridiculous.

VAUDEVILLE
A light often comic theatrical piece frequently combining pantomime, dialogue, dancing, and song.

THEATRE OF THE RIDICULOUS
(from Cambridge Paperback Guide to Theatre)
Theatre of the Ridiculous, American Movement.
A self-consciously wild production style, full of witty word-play, sexual ambiguity, and bad taste.

In 1967 the Play-house of the Ridiculous opened in OFF OFF Broadway with The Life of Lady Godiva, written by Ronald Tavel.

(from Factory Made:Warhol in the Sixties, www.factorymade.org)
Parading across the tiny stage were a shoe fetishist, a fat sheriff, a local s & m nobleman, angels, a lewd horseman. There was also a singing nun chorus whose hit song was "Morning Horniness," sung in counterpoint to a chorus of angels.

In these first "official" Ridiculous productions, the hallmarks of the Ridiculous style were already apparent. The casting, for example, drew not only from New York's pool of trained actors, but also from natural unschooled performers. Ron Tavel (www.ronald-tavel.com) described them as "the crazies coming off the street who are so phenomenal that when you see them walking down the street you say, ‘That person has to be onstage: they were born to it.'" These neophytes offered John Vacarro a group to mold into his own stage vision, fueled by the fresh intensity of amateurs.