“Blood on stage”: Charles Ludlam’s play is staged for the first time in Greece

The subversive comedy “BLOOD ON SCENE” American writer and actor Charles Ludlamis staged for the first time in Greece, under direction Tassos Pyrgieri, with a troupe of excellent actors consisting of Thanos Lekka, Alexandros Varthi, Rena Kyprioti, Christos Stathousi, Phoivos Markianos, Marilena Moschou, Maki Nano.

The play

The performance “Stage Blood” (literally it means the fake “blood” used in theaters and cinema) concerns the theater life of a third-rate family troupe located in a certain American town (Mudville, Laspopolis) and about to present “Hamlet”. Except that for the given performance the troupe does not have Ophelia (the actress who played her stormed off and left). Fortunately, a native of Laspoupoli, Elfie Fay she knows the role of the Shakespearean heroine by heart and thus takes on the role. He is the leader of the troupe Carlton Stone the elder, once a great Hamlet, past age and now quite resigned. Hamlet is now played by his son, Carlton Stone Jr., who, although heir to the theater business, will be sidelined by his motherHelga Weinand her troupe actor lover, Edmund Dundrery. References to the plot of “Hamlet” are clear throughout the development of the play. It plays a key role in the “success” of the shows Jenkinsthe stage manager, who caught the germ of the theater (in other words, it runs in the veins of the stage blood) and wants to present the “Fossil fuels”, an avant-garde play he wrote himself. What Ludlam attempted in “Blood on the Stage” is directly related to the team he created, the Ridiculous Theatrical Companysince in the first upload of the project (in a off Broadway theater in July 1974) the roles were performed by the veterans of the group (Black-Eyed Susan, Lola Pashalinski, Bill Vehr, Jack Mallory, John D. Brockmeyer) and Ludlam himself, who played the role of Carlton Jr. and Hamlet.

The Ridiculous Theatrical Company (RTC) founded in 1967 by the writer, actor and director Charles Ludlam. For the next 20 years the group was associated with the demands of youth movements and the New York counter-culture of the time. He and his associates drew from the drag queen shows and their disguises, they played with the concept of gender (as men often played female roles and vice versa). Ludlam’s favorite mode was the parody and “teased” adaptation of different theatrical genres with key reinforcements of transvestism and various aspects of pop culture (stars, old movies, popular songs, material from TV programs and commercials).

Ludlam is interested in satirizing in a way inside joke the morals of a troupe, starting from weaknesses of their character and extending its aim to a multitude of issues that concern their daily life and art: schools of acting, theatrical theories, opinions and clichés of the artists, superstitions, follies, anxieties and practical problems of production and their livelihood. Especially in “Blood on the Stage” Ludlam treads on the Shakespearean masterpiece, passages of which are “interpreted” from time to time by the protagonists and teases the relationship between persons and roles so that the mental juxtaposition of the case of “Hamlet” with the staging of the performance by a present-day troupe her calamity to be lasting. This is where the comedy of the thing arises, from the constant clash of the great old material with the trivial today’s theatrics. His parody is not a weapon of dissolution but a dynamic condition at the end of which what is confirmed is that art is life – and carries within it all that, comic and dramatic, reversals and exaggerations, falls and rises, life can hold.

A few words about the author

He was born in Long Island in 1943. Studied “Drama and Literature” and very early on, in 1964, he declared himself gay. He founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967, retaining the position of writer, director and star of the group. Ludlam dealt with comic adaptations of classic works or novels with a satirical spirit. The satirical, innovative for the time, cross gender his theater quickly found a loyal audience and his team was able to work with financial stability for twenty years. He wrote, directed and acted (female and male roles) in most Ridiculous Theatrical Company productions, often co-starring his partner, Everett Quinton.

In his works he imitated many different literary and theatrical genres: from Gothic novels (on which the great success of “The Curse of Irma Bep“, where two actors play seven roles) to film noir and pulp fiction, the French “well-made” works of the 19th century. to the opera. Many productions today would be classified as queer theater. Among the first victims of AIDS, Ludlam was diagnosed in March 1987 and died of pneumonia PCP two months later, at the age of 44.

A few words about the director

Reading over and over “Blood on the Stage” by Charles Ludlam, an author we know very little about in our country, that he is an eccentric and intelligent artist, who wants to take you to the depths of the theater with his specific play illusion and challenge you to explore the boundaries between reality and fantasy, truth and lies, life and theater. You read a play and it refers you to at least three other plays, the theater within the theater at every moment, from the time you read it until you start the process of testing to stage the show.

Hamlet, Treplieff, Arcadina, Gertrude, Ophelia, Nina, Carl, Elfie, Stone Sr., a ghost, a second ghost, perhaps a third ghost, all heroes of a play, of an American ” “cursed” provincial troupe, they become entangled in an unexpected and absurd way, that one role absorbs the other and leads to endless laughter, twists and surprises.

After completing the reading, he begins an unexpected adventure, a journey into the heart of the theater art, which he loves so much and wanted to share it with colleagues, who he has worked with in the recent past and who share common codes of communication, mutual appreciation and face life and theater optimistically. It was a big challenge for him to manage to keep my actors alert while he had to touch texts such as the “Spanish Tragedy” by Thomas Kind, “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, “The Book of Tea” by Kakuzo Okakura, “The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov and at the same time to decode a frenzied comedy of twists where he found that although everything has been said in the theater repeatedly, there is a way to reintroduce it with a new look. They look forward to sharing with the audience this intense experience, which this strange “guy”, Charles Ludlam, gave them with his play “Blood on the Stage” and are proud to present it for the first time in Hellas.