Theatre of The Ridiculous - Influence On 70s Culture

Influence On 70s Culture

The Theatre of the Ridiculous was a main point of contact between the underground campy, queer sub-culture and the style that dominated much of the 70s (glam rock, disco, the Rocky Horror cult).

Concerning 70s fashion, Leee Childers has said (quoted in Please Kill Me):

... John Vaccaro used tons of glitter, that was his trademark. Everyone wore glitter. The whole cast was always covered in glitter.

People had been wearing glitter for a long time and the drag queens were wearing it on the street, but I think "glitter' really took off when John Vaccaro went shopping for costume material and he came across this little place in Chinatown that was having a big clearance sale on their glitter. He bought it all – giant shopping-bag-size bags of glitter in all colors.

John brought it back to the theater and encouraged everyone to use as much of it as they possibly could, anywhere they could possibly put it. Of course their faces were covered with glitter, their hair was full of glitter, the actors who played the Moon Reindeer had their entire bodies covered in green glitter. Baby Betty, who was playing a thalidomide baby, had glitter coming out of her pussy – so it was because of John Vaccaro that glitter became synonymous with outrageousness.

Vaccaro's Play-House productions are a connection between Warhol's Factory and the punk culture that developed in New York in the mid-1970s: Patti Smith performed in a play written by Jackie Curtis called Femme Fatale; according to Jayne County (aka Wayne County): "... Actually, it was simulation of shooting up speed while shrieking, 'Brian Jones is dead!' That was Patti Smith's big moment on the New York underground stage."

Many people have attributed the origins of the Rocky Horror phenomenon to the Theatre of the Ridiculous, notably Lou Reed