CHARLES LUDLAM, who died in 1987 at age 44, was the mastermind of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and creator of his own genre of theater, ridiculousness.
His characters may be types, but they maintain a deadpan unawareness of this fact, thus avoiding a theatrical pitfall their creator notes in his diaries: "The mistake in dramatizing Kafka is always the same:... actors and directors don't play the text, they play the implications of the text".
Here is a show that was open and even gleeful about its pilfering from any number of literary and theatrical sources, but creator John Logan approached these tropes, characters and themes with serious compassion and irresistible energy.
Occasionally, for a week or two, I became Ross Collins, "creator and theatrical collaborator" who got to muck around with a large selection of incredibly talented and enthusiastic theatre types and giant inflatable elephants in London.
Gardley's strengths are also his weaknesses: his youthful exuberance — his need to fit everything into a line, even when it's spoken by an incidental character — can be wearying; and his baroque language sometimes feels like a boulder plunked down in the middle of the stage, as his characters make their way through the dense thicket of their creator's theatrical consciousness.
Important kunqu dramatists were Tang Xianzu (died 1616), famed for the delicate sensitivity of his poetry; Shen Jing (died 1610), who excelled in versification; and the creator of effective theatrical pieces, Li Yu (1611 85).
With him were three others: Ferenc Sebő, a creator of anarchist theatricals, and two longstanding associates from the party's early days, Tibor Árki, a graphic designer, and Zsolt Victora, an art dealer.
"There have been some small site-specific performance events, but as far as we know this is the first application [of AR] in a real, theatrical context," Weems tells The Creators Project.
As for the ridiculous vein, few have mined it more assiduously than CHRISTOPHER DURANG, creator of such cracked theatrical gems as Sister Mary Ignatius (the frying nun) and "The Marriage of Bette and Boo".
