THEATRE OF THE RIDICULOUS
Below is an oral history that features Agosto Machado and Tony Zanetta, two pivotal figures involved in the Theatre of the Ridiculous, a groundbreaking theater genre that emerged in New York City during the early 1960s. The Theatre of the Ridiculous rejected the formalism of traditional theater, breaking away from naturalistic acting and classical narrative structures that had long dominated the stage. Instead, it embraced a more anarchic, freewheeling approach, where the absurd and the surreal became vital elements of performance. Productions were often characterized by bold exaggeration, flamboyant costumes, and surrealist plots, all designed to challenge the sensibilities of the audience and disrupt conventional expectations.
At the heart of this movement was a desire to provoke and jolt, to shatter the polished veneer of mainstream theater and replace it with something raw, bizarre, and unapologetically extravagant. Characters in Theatre of the Ridiculous productions were larger than life, with actors purposefully pushing the limits of believability through grotesque, often comedic, portrayals. The productions were visually rich, with ostentatious stagecraft and camp aesthetics that fused the theatrical with the surreal. These performances also frequently addressed taboo topics, touching on themes of gender fluidity, sexuality, and the rejection of societal norms, making the genre a forerunner in the conversations around identity that would soon emerge in popular culture.
Agosto Machado and Tony Zanetta were central to this experimental scene, collaborating with other key figures like Charles Ludlam and John Vaccaro. Their work helped shape the movement’s legacy, blending art with rebellion and challenging the public to rethink what theater could be. Through their contributions, the Theatre of the Ridiculous not only left an indelible mark on avant-garde theater but also paved the way for broader cultural dialogues that questioned and deconstructed traditional narratives of identity, social conformity, and artistic expression. This oral history provides a firsthand look at their experiences and the creative revolution they helped ignite.
—August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project
August Bernadicou: Before we talk about the Theatre of the Ridiculous, I was hoping you'd paint a picture of the culture and society back then, the draft, checking the box, what that meant long term, and what created the environment.
Tony Zanetta: I always find it cloudy to look back 55 years from 2020, knowing what we know in 2020, to try to understand what 1965 was like. With the Theatre of the Ridiculous, you also have to understand, John Vaccaro, the leader of The Play-House of The Ridiculous troupe, was 10 or 15 years older than we were, so were Andy Warhol, Ronnie Tavel, and Jack Smith.
These were all boys from the Midwest who grew up in working-class families, immigrants, very macho environments, and they were sensitive and artistic. They were fags. They grew up in the '30s and the '40s. The big influence in their lives was movies, I think. It was in my life, too, movies were everything. It was like, "Ah, Technicolor!”
Anyway, that's the environment they grew up in, and they all flocked to New York City to create new lives. In 1965, '66, you have to remember what was going on—I have this book at home, The Village Voice Reader. It's really interesting because it's got these two essays: one is pro-gay and one is anti-gay.
Let me tell you, in 1965, homophobia was not considered strange at all. They did not like gays. There's the whole thing about the fags taking over, the fairies taking over the Village, how dare they, and blah, blah, blah. They'll never have any kind of movement because they're dainty and they're not going to get together and stand up for themselves.
Then there was Vietnam going on, of course. There was that kind of pressure too. Every gay boy in the '60s—you had to decide, are you going to check the box that says you are gay? Because if you checked the box to avoid serving in the war, you were allegedly mentally ill. You were officially mentally ill by the government. It went down in black and white. You were now undesirable. You were mentally ill. I checked the box because I thought, fuck you. I'm not going to lie to you in order to go to your war.
In the meantime, it was a lot of fun because it was a secret life and the bars were fantastic. There was a community. Once you got into that community, it was embracing and it was exciting because it was hidden and strange. I'm getting off the subject of the Ridiculous. For me, what started all this was, I think it started with Jack Smith.
Jack Smith was a performance artist and a filmmaker. He was also a big influence on Warhol because of his films. He was a big influence on John Vaccaro. John worked with Jack. I'm trying to get to the history of the Ridiculous.
The one that really shouldn't be hidden is Ronnie Tavel because Ronnie Tavel worked with Andy in the factory, writing the screenplays for the movies. They made a few movies, then there were a couple of movies that Andy didn't want to make. He went to John, who had worked with Jack. John was in Normal Love. I guess John wanted to direct.
They staged these plays. That was the beginning of the Play-House of the Ridiculous. Our thinking was, "We've gone beyond the absurd. Our position is absolutely preposterous." That's all Ronnie.
Agosto Machado: Oh, I just wanted to interject that wherever these people were across America, one of the things they worshiped was Maria Montez, the Queen of Technicolor. She inspired Jack Smith, John Vacarro, Ronnie Tavel, and a lot of queer people. That was our escape into the Arabian Nights, and we could be the heroine who’s rescued by a big strong man who is also a prince and you'll end up in a castle.
August: Do you think there's something lacking in gayness now–something secret or hidden like you mentioned?
Tony: This was all about defiance and irreverence. It was about standing up and speaking for yourself. It wasn't just queer culture. A lot of the '60s was about becoming who you are, do your own thing, sexual revolution, women's liberation.
Agosto: Drugs?
Tony: Drugs helped, that's for sure. It was throwing off the mantle of what had come before. That doesn't exist now in quite the same way. A lot of what people were standing up for back then has been accepted. To my thinking, and this is just the way I am, we were running away from traditional norms and society: we didn't want to be like our parents, we didn't want to get married, we did not want to have children. We wanted to create our own paths. I don't see that in the gay community anymore.
August: People wanting to be in the army?
Tony: Wanting to be in the army, yes. All those things which we were appalled by. We just—no, that was not for us. Yes, I think that's different. I'm old, so I don't know. I'm not excited about being gay anymore. It was those bars that Dana and I went to when we were in college together in Buffalo. Dana introduced me to the Play-House of the Ridiculous. The Eagle Inn, The Blue Chip Inn when you walked through that door, it was like, “Whoa.” It was really something.
Everybody thinks everything started with Stonewall. Let me tell you, when I was in Buffalo, there was a lot going on. In Rochester, Martha's was a bar that was in downtown Rochester with big plate glass windows. It had been there for 25 years in 1965. Martha was very well-connected. Nobody bothered Martha.
You went to these bars, and you met women who lived as men and men who lived as women and drag queens and preppy boys and glamor. People didn't make such a big deal about it. They just did it. You didn't have to box yourself in. You didn't have to stay there for the rest of your life, either. But now I see how people are so bent on categorizing everything and naming everything. I don't think that's an advancement.
August Tony mentioned checking the box and being mentally ill. Did you ever feel mentally ill, Agosto?
Agosto: I was always an outsider. People of color who were queer, who were bossed around in New York–I was always put in special education because I was lost. Light in the loafers, they used to say, very nervous. It was like a detention class, only with music and crayons and colors. All the fabulous misfits and challenged people and I thought we were a special society.
We were protected because all the bullies in the yard would try to harm us. We sort of clung together. It was just wonderful. No matter what public school… I was in different foster homes. No matter where in New York City, there was a special ed class. There's a place for me somewhere.
Tony: I would say a lot of New York, like Downtown, you found other crazy people. It wasn't a bad thing to be around crazy people. It was what you wanted. The crazier, the better. I was always afraid I wasn't crazy enough.
They were also brilliant and fun and we were all doing exciting things and the Play-House was about that because it attracted a mix of people; but, again, John was so much older than everybody else. John was older than everyone.
I just wanted to say also that we talk about the Play-House or you talk about the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, but Theatre of the Ridiculous became an umbrella for many other people. I came into the Ridiculous through Tony Ingrassia. His work was certainly ridiculous. Larry Ray, Ethel Eichelberg, there's so many. The Ridiculous went here, there, and the other way.
Now, Charles Ludlam's company became fairly successful in a more mainstream way. A lot of people think when you mention the Ridiculous you're talking about Charles, but Charles was an actor in John's Play-House of the Ridiculous who was then fired and took half the company with him to create his own company, the Ridiculous Theatrical Company.
Debbie Harry worked in the Ridiculous, Patti Smith worked in the Ridiculous. Patti was with Penny and Jackie in Femme Fatale, directed by Tony Ingrassia. David Johansen worked with Charles Ludlam. A lot of us, there was all this mixing and crossing and crisscrossing and again, it was a community.
Agosto: The cross-pollination of the misfits that had to express themselves in some manner, way, shape, or form, not just performing on the street, being louder than the queen next to you that's dishing. The natural gravitation, there's some place we could do this. Even in an after-hour bars or a sex club, you could be grand until they said, people are trying to have sex here.
August: Can you guys, or Agosto, can you talk about the split between Charles Ludlam and John Vaccaro?
Tony: John was not an easy person to work with. There was nothing easy about John. His work was challenging. He was challenging. He was Sicilian. He could be really vicious, but he was also brilliant. It was really exciting to be around John and around his work. He fired Jackie from her play, Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit. He fired Charles from his play.
Agosto: I think one thing you have to always remember is that Vaccaro always spoke about how great an actor Charles was.
Tony: Charles also gave John a lot of credit.
Agosto: Oh, yes, he had to.
Tony: He said that John gave him his theatrical life because John let him go as far out as he could go. Again, we're in the '60s. Do you think Charles Ludlam was going to get a part in some play, in an Off-Broadway? Who was going to hire Charles Ludlam? He wasn't pretty. He was over the top. He was not going to get a job until he was maybe 40 or 45 when he could become a character actor but nobody wanted a 22-year-old character actor. John gave him life.
August: Agosto, you always say you can act, sing or dance. Is there a difference between acting and performing?
Agosto: Oh, I think acting is an art form. You've got to know, you have things together to be able to do it. All I do is perform. A lot of the Play-House were outsider people who did drugs and sex and so forth and were just displaying themselves in some manner, way, shape, or form. I have no memory due to drugs and drinking.
You may laugh about it, but if you're doing a play with me, it's not easy. People have to kick me.
Tony: I know.
Agosto: Thank you, Tony.
Agosto: At least they shoved me on stage and put me in a costume, and I feel happy.
Tony: You also have to realize that this was theater. Theater in the '60s was all about the method, Stanislavski, naturalism, realism. This was against all of it. John didn't want anything natural. He was creating a new American theater. He did create a new American theater. There was a Theatre of the Absurd in Europe. There was a Theatre of the Ridiculous in the United States.
John had lived in Japan. A lot of this was very influenced by Kabuki. It was very stylized, the makeup, and the glitter. He bought bags and bags of glitter on Canal Street. Everybody was covered with glitter. It was beautiful to look at. It was extreme. What else was it?
Agosto: Very difficult to get off.
Tony: John also, he said this to me many times, and I believe it: he came to New York and he thought he was going to be hanging out with the abstract expressionists. He liked those guys. Abstract expressionists were not going to hang out with John because that was a very, very macho world. Very homophobic, very macho but in his way, he was an abstract expressionist because he created this color and activity on stage. He always followed a script.
The first thing, the thing that got me into the Play-House, that really sold me on the Ridiculous was when I went to see a revival of Nightclub in 1970. The only thing I remember is Penny Arcade—Penny didn't have a role, but John not only encouraged her, he forced her to steal the spotlight, steal the stage.
I sat down in my seat and Penny was literally rolling across the floor back and forth. "The calla lilies are in bloom. The calla lilies are in bloom." With that demented look in her face. I just wanted to get up there and pick the calla lilies with her because it was really strong. What I'm trying to say is that he encouraged all these people, there was always a chorus. It was a little bit like a Greek chorus. They were as important as the players or as the play. That's why he had trouble with the playwrights sometimes.
He didn't care that much about the play, although he wanted the play to be heard, but it was all this other stuff that really made it magical. In that way, I think he really was an abstract expressionist. It wasn't choreographed, but it was choreography. It was dance, but it wasn't dance. Then it influenced a lot of things like the Broadway play Hair. Those guys were big fans of John's.
Agosto: He used to come and sit in our rehearsals.
Tony: They did pay him a little homage later on with a play that never took off called YMCA. They showcased it five years or ten years later?
Agosto: Can I interject my line?
Tony: Oh, certainly.
Agosto: I was told by Michael Arian to give his line they used to always say, "Ludlam got them hard, but Vacarro made them cum."
That's a quote. You're going to be quizzed afterwards.
August: It seems like The Cockettes get a lot more credit, at least with my generation, than the Theatre of the Ridiculous genre. However, it was a whole different thing, whereas you guys had scripts and music, and they were happenings on stage. Why do you think there is a split in recognition?
Tony: The Cockette documentary—I don't know. Also, Hibiscus, the Cockettes’ founder, started out with the Ridiculous. One of the first ridiculous things I saw was Guerrilla Queen by Ronald Tavel, which again was the play that split Ronnie and John up. It started at Judson Memorial Church, but then it went to the Martinique Theatre. Hibiscus and his father, George Harris, were both in that play. The Cockettes came out of the Ridiculous, one way or another.
Agosto: It's part of the extended family.
I want to say, I was bicoastal, not bisexual. I was part of the Cockettes and so forth. Thank
God I don't have memory cells because there were fabulous things to remember that other people tell me about. I believe them.
There were also other groups. There was the Bon Bons in Los Angeles. They were from Milwaukee. The Whizz Kids in Seattle.
Tony: Yes, they were all, and it was all over the world. People talk about Bowie and being influenced by the Ridiculous, but David worked with Lindsey Kemp. Lindsey Kemp was not doing the same thing because he was really more of a mime, but he was influenced by Kabuki in the same way that John was. It was all this new form of, it wasn't pure. You could grab from this, grab from that. It was a circus, it was carnival, it was Kabuki, it was Shakespeare, and you put it all together and create something new. This was happening worldwide at the same time.
August: You mentioned glitter earlier, and now David Bowie. You were David Bowie's tour manager, I believe, for three years?
Tony: Something like that.
August: Can you talk about the Theatre of the Ridiculous impact on music and culture and art?
Tony: That's always hard to talk about because are you talking about style? Really what we're talking about, after all these years, I'm distilling it. The Velvet Underground was part of Andy Warhol’s Factory. Lou Reed, part of the factory. In New York in those days, the epicenter of cool was the Factory and the Ridiculous.
If you have somebody in England who's trying to make an impression, what did he want to do? He wanted to get to the Ridiculous, the Factory, to Lou, to the Velvet Underground, because it gave him an edge that he didn't have.
Charles Ludlam veered off in a different direction.
August: There was also music in the productions.
Tony: We did have bands on stage. Plus, if you fast forward a little bit to 1973, maybe 1972, we can talk about the Mercer Arts and The New York Dolls.
Who else? Ruby Lynn Rayner, Ruby and the Rednecks, Wayne County, Elda, and Eric Emerson, who covered himself from head to toe in glitter. All of those bands in the early New York rock and roll scene came from the Ridiculous.
Elda made our costumes in Wayne County’s play World: A Birth of a Nation. Debbie Harry lived upstairs from Tony Ingrassia on Thompson Street. He coached the Stilettos. He coached Debbie for years. He went on tour with Debbie. She gives him a little credit in her book. Debbie and Blondie were the band for Vain Victory. Tony Ingrassia did a revival of Vain Victory. Vain Victory, the first production, was in an art gallery.
Debbie was in it. That was one of the first public performances of Blondie. Debbie did something I probably told you. Ingrassia was like, very much like—Ingrassia directed Pork. He's not acknowledged as much as he probably should have been. He was just as difficult to work with as John Vaccaro. He was always ranting and raving.
One time he’s yelling at the band. Debbie, she's the only person I ever saw do this. She didn't do it in front of anybody while I was there, because I was there after. She very coolly and calmly went up to Tony after. She said, don't ever talk to them that way again. She laid it out for him not to talk to them that way. I was like, "Wow, she's something else." Because nobody dared to speak back to Tony Ingrassia.
He listened.
August: I was reading that John Vaccaro also had a confrontational directing style. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Tony: Oh my God.
August: Do you think that could exist? Do you think that could exist now from a director?
Tony: Taboo, where are you?
My favorite moment was—one of my favorites, there were a couple. I did a revival of Nightclub. Jamie Andrews brought me into the play. Joe Pichette and I were rehearsing. The choreographer was there, Carolyn Lord. She's rehearsing. She's trying to teach us this dance. The first time, neither one of us are dancers, but John is screaming at us. She's trying to teach us the dance. He said, "Louder."
He wants a full out performance at the same time. It's probably the third rehearsal. Then all of a sudden he turns to Jamie and he said, "I thought you said he could act."
That was John's directing style. He would pit you against each other.
Agosto: He used psychological warfare on the people in his play.
August It worked. Agosto, can you tell the story you told me Monday about what happened to you?
Agosto: That long ago? I'm supposed to remember?
Oh, that really happened. Oh yes, that was Monday. Oh, I'm reaching back a few years or decades. In any case, part of the Play-House is John would bully us and he would push us to the edge of madness.
Paul Foster, one of the founders of La MaMa, did a version of Satyricon after Fellini did his. He wanted realism. He told the troupe, "Tear her clothes off." I was looking. Who's her? It was me.
They ripped my t-shirt, my underpants, everything. All through this rehearsal. I was saying, "John, I was naked." He says, "Let's not make a fuss over a little thing like that."
Tony: Another favorite time of mine was we were doing the 60 Minute Queer Show. John played himself in the 60 Minute Queer Show. He's the director. It's part of the script. John always would invite friends to the tech dress rehearsal. This is a tech dress rehearsal.
First of all, he kept them waiting for at least an hour, maybe two. Finally, they come into La MaMa and they're sitting there and the play starts. It starts, it goes on for a few minutes.
Then John looks at the audience, and he says, "Get out, get out." They all think it's part of the play because he is, "I'm not kidding, get out." They got out.
August: Do you think that could exist now on Broadway or off Broadway?
Tony: It didn't exist then on Broadway or off Broadway. This was not Broadway.
Agosto: Broadway has finally absorbed everything that was done from the '60s to now you can see multimedia and all this business and interaction and no fourth wall.
Agosto: It is at such a ridiculous price. Half price tickets are still $80, $90.
August: Is there anything that that style pushed you to do that you wouldn't have been able to do if someone was giving you constant encouragement and support?
Agosto: Oh, gosh. I'm trying to absorb the question. Oh, I'm just happy with the way things are now.
Tony: I can answer that. Because Ingrassia pushed me to the edge. I had been acting. Most of the people in the company were not actors, but I had done some acting when I got into World: Birth of a Nation, a play by Wayne, Jayne, but Wayne County then. I knew Ingrassia a little bit. Anyway, he put me in the play. I wasn't so sure about it.
I was like, "Oh, do I really want to do this?" Because you had to be willing to expose yourself. You had to be willing to not be pretty. You had to be willing to show it all. Most actors want to be loved. This was not about being loved. This was about being whatever.
Anyway, we're doing a rehearsal, and I'm not getting it. He's screaming, and he's screaming at me, and screaming at me, and screaming at me.
Finally, something in me really broke. I'm screaming back, but I'm screaming back in the lines. The minute I screamed back with that line, I had it. I had the character. From that moment on, I really had the Ridiculous style, and I could do it. Until then, I just couldn't. He just pushed me into it.
They also didn't know how to direct any other way. They were Italian, stressed Italian. No, seriously. Charles wasn't Sicilian, but John was Sicilian. He was just like my grandmother.
This was not foreign to me. I wasn't scared by a little yelling. That's what I grew up with. It made me feel comfortable.
August What is the Ridiculous style that you mentioned?
Tony: It's not that hard. It's very broad and over the top, really. It's not natural. It's not realistic. You're not trying to convince anybody of anything.
Agosto: It's not subtle.
Tony: It is a performance. It's not subtle at all.
There was also another element. A lot of us, besides Mario Montez, were also influenced by Lucy and TV. A lot of it's very, I Love Lucy. Pork was certainly Ridiculous, but it was a very different style. Visually, it was slicker. It was more sophisticated looking. The style of acting was like TV. It was a sitcom. It was very much, I Love Lucy.
Agosto: And The Honeymooners.
Tony: Ruby talks about that. Her acting was very much Ridiculous.
August: That brings me to a good question. Do the men playing drag queens have to do anything with being homosexual in plays?
Tony: I don't really think so. I think a good example is Charles as Camille. Charles was not a pretty man by any stretch of the imagination. When you think of Camille, you think of Greta Garbo. Charles was brilliant as Camille. You totally bought him as this beautiful, courtesan Camille. That's what made it Ridiculous in a way. It was heart-wrenching. You really could feel it. In a way, so you could see it better. Because you weren't seeing a beautiful woman. You were seeing an odd-looking man doing this. He was really doing it.
August: Did you ever play a woman in a play?
Agosto: Oh, I think that's what I was always playing. Even when I was doing male drag.
August What part of yourself did you channel to do that?
Agosto: Oh I don’t—.
August Was it just natural?
Agosto: I'm as deep as a thimble. Whatever comes out, what you see is what you get.
Tony: I just played the Whore of Babylon in an extravaganza by Taboo. I don't mention that off the top. Because one of the things I liked about doing that play—he may disagree with me, whatever, but Taboo is doing Ridiculous Theatre. Taboo’s style of directing wasn't that different. No, seriously, it really wasn't. The other thing that really fascinated me about working with Tabboo was his process because it was so similar to Ingrassia's process. Where we were following along, doing a script. Then all of a sudden, he'd have an idea. Let's do this or do that. Because Ingrassia was constantly interjecting.
Ingrassia was a good director of the Ridiculous. Because he was a playwright. He took his playwriting very seriously. He didn't take anybody else's very seriously. If he was doing Jackie's play or Wayne's play, it was just a bunch of shit thrown together. He would come up with these brilliant things that were certainly not in the script that really brought those plays to life. A lot of his plays also, especially Jackie's and Wayne County’s were collaged, they were cut and pasted. They were script pieces of dialogue. They were song titles. They were all sorts of things put together. That was it. Let the pieces fall wherever.
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