Theatre of The Ridiculous - The Character of John Vaccaro

The Character of John Vaccaro

John Vaccaro was by all accounts a brilliantly creative person. Charles Ludlam has written: "John has great instinct and is a brilliant actor. He gave me freedom. He allowed me to flip out all I wanted onstage. He never felt that I was too pasty, corny, mannered, campy. He let me do anything I wanted."

But Vaccaro was also a very difficult person to work with: In addition to the famous occasion where he kicked Charles Ludlam out of the production of a play that Ludlam had written, there was another occasion where he literally kicked Jackie Curtis out of a production of a play that Curtis had written (Heaven Grand In Amber Orbit).

Charles Ludlam goes on to write: "He is very primitive and very difficult for most actors to work with, because he's sort of savage. He gets you into doing things by rote. He criticizes ideas without giving any suggestions for improvments, and then makes you do it over and over again. It's psychological torture."

Similarly, Leee Childers has commented: "John Vaccaro was a very difficult man to work with because he used anger to draw a performance out of a person."