Cockettes
| Formation | 1969 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Purpose | Psychedelic, transgender, musical |
| Location |
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The Cockettes were an avant garde psychedelic hippie theater group founded by Hibiscus (George Edgerly Harris II) in the fall of 1969. The troupe was formed out of a group of hippie artists, men and women, who were living in one of the many communes in Haight-Ashbury, a neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Hibiscus came to live with them because of their preference for dressing outrageously and proposed the idea of putting their lifestyle on the stage.
Their brand of theater was influenced by The Living Theater, John Vaccaro's Play House of the Ridiculous, the films of Jack Smith and the LSD ethos of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. The troupe performed all original material, staging musicals with original songs. The first year they parodied American musicals and sang show tunes (or original musical comedies in the same vein). They gained an underground cult following that led to mainstream exposure.
The Cockettes were the subject of a 2002 documentary called simply The Cockettes directed by David Weissman and Bill Weber.
On New Years Eve, 31 December 1969, at the Palace Theatre in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, impresario Sebastian [real name Milton Miron] let the Cockettes perform as part of his "Nocturnal Dream Show", a showcase of underground films, in exchange for free admission. The posters for these performances were designed by Todd Trexler. The show soon became a "must-see" for San Francisco's hip community. Combining LSD-influenced dancing, set design, costumes and their own versions of show tunes (or original tunes in the same vein), the Cockettes took to the stage every month, performing prior to the Saturday midnight "Nocturnal Dream Show". Show titles included Gone With the Showboat to Oklahoma, Tinsel Tarts In A Hot Coma, Journey to the Center of Uranus, Smacky & Our Gang, Hollywood Babylon and Pearls Over Shanghai. Word quickly got out that nothing like these shows had ever been seen before, and within a few months the Cockettes were getting enormous attention from the media. Not only hippie magazines, such as Earth and Rolling Stone, wanted stories on the Cockettes, but also mainstream magazines such as Look, Life and Esquire were anxious to do features as well.
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