Charles Ludlam
| Charles Ludlam | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 12, 1943 Floral Park, New York, United States |
| Died | May 28, 1987 (aged 44) New York, New York, United States |
| Partner(s) | Everett Quinton |
Charles Braun Ludlam (April 12, 1943 – May 28, 1987) was an American actor, director, and playwright.
Ludlam was born in Floral Park, New York, the son of Marjorie (née Braun) and Joseph William Ludlam. He was raised in Greenlawn, New York, on Long Island, and attended Harborfields High School. The fact that he was gay was not a secret. He performed locally in plays with the Township Theater Group, Huntington's community theater, and worked backstage at the Red Barn Theater, a summer stock company in Northport. While he was in his senior year of high school, he directed, produced and performed with a group of friends, students from Huntington, Northport, Greenlawn, and Centerport. Their "Students Repertory Theatre" in the loft studio beneath the Posey School of Dance on Northport's Main Street was large enough to seat an audience of 25; their audiences were appreciative and enthusiastic, and the house was sold out for every performance. Their repertoire included Madman on the Roof by Kan Kikuchi, Theatre of the Soul [1], their own Readers' Theater adaptation of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, as well as plays by August Strindberg and Eugene O'Neill. He received a degree in dramatic literature from Hofstra University in 1964, by which time he had officially come out. It was at Hofstra that Ludlam met Black-Eyed Susan (actor), whom he cast in one of his college productions. The two became close friends and over the next 20 years, Black-Eyed Susan acted in more of Ludlam's plays than any other actor, except Ludlam.
Ludlam joined John Vaccaro's Play-House of the Ridiculous, and after a falling out, became founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York City in 1967. His first plays were inchoate exercises: however, starting with Bluebeard he began to write more structured works, which, though they were pastiches of gothic novels, Lorca, Shakespeare, Wagner, popular culture, old movies, and anything else that might get a laugh, had more serious import. Theater critic Brendan Gill after seeing one of Ludlam's plays famously remarked, "This isn't farce. This isn't absurd. This is absolutely ridiculous!". Yet on his own work Ludlam had commented:
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