Charles Ludlam's

CONQUEST OF THE UNIVERSE, or When Queens Collide - a Tragedy

Ludlam's 1967 reimagining of Marlowe's epic masterpiece TAMBURLAINE. Watch the President of Earth rape and pillage his way across the universe...


December 2004
 HERE Arts Center
145 Avenue of the Americas
Limited Engagement - Eight Performances Only!!
December 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th @7pm
Tickets $15
For tickets, please go to http://www.smarttix.com or call 212-868-4444

Work-in-Progress:
The Ice Factory @ The Ohio Theater
July 16th - 19th @ 7:00pm, 2003
The Ohio Theater is at 66 Wooster Street, between Spring & Broome

director - Emma Griffin
sets - Katya Blumberg
costumes - David Zinn with Meredith Palin
lights - Mark Barton & Greg Emetaz assisted by Kelly Hannon
dramaturg - Joe E. Jeffreys
a fabulous torch song composed by Phil Kline
choreography by Katherine Profeta
stage manager - Megan Anne Bezdek
assistant director - Josh Adler

with:

Matthew Maher - Tamburlaine, President of Earth
Maria Striar - Alice, First Lady of Earth
Bryan Safi - Techellus, Tamburlaine’s man
Franklin Hundley - Usumcasane, Tamburlaine’s man
Clayton Dean Smith - Bajazeth, King of Mars
Gibson Frazier - Zabina, Queen of Mars
Gibson Frazier - Cosroe, twin brother of Zabina
Sarah K. Lippman - Ebea, Zabina’s maid
Rachel Shukert - Venus, Queen of Venus
Franklin Hundley - Consuela, Venus’s maid
Aundré Chin - Natolia, Queen of Saturn
Suzi Takahaashi - Maganavox, King of Mercury
Franklin Hundley - Ortygius, Caliph of Jupiter
Suzi Takahashi - The Witch of Ensor

and:

Erin Andrea, Jenny Penny Curry, Joshua Dickens, Marylen Townley, Loren Fenton, Stacy Levine, Gregory Marcel, Lucia Rosales, Michael Schreiber, Carrie Tavris, Leann Williford


WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: A brief note on the Play, Playwright, Ridiculous and other matters of Universal Importance

A long time ago, 1967, in a galaxy far far away, the NYC underground theatre scene, a playwright was fired from the cast of his own play. Twenty-three year-old Charles Ludlam left John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous Repertory Club, Inc.’s production of his play and took several other defectors with him. Together they started their own rival theatre troupe that eventually came to be known as The Ridiculous Theatrical Company.

Conquest of the Universe or, as Ludlam not so subtly titled his production in part to distinguish it from Vaccaro’s, When Queens Collide, is Ludlam’s second play. The epic collage possesses an amorphous associative dramaturgy and is anarchistic, bombastic, arcane yet futuristic, beyond raunchy, frantic yet languid, scatological and downright dirty, drug influenced and indicative of the far flung sources Ludlam fodders throughout his subsequent plays. A mix of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, the play also draws Hitler’s speeches and writings, TV commercials of the day and newspaper help wanted ads into its orbit. Ludlam’s pop counter-cultural Elizabethan complications occur in outer space where Tamberlaine’s hubris now extends to the subjugation of planets in a fierce battle of sexual conquests and imperialism.

In the decades following through the course of 27 more original plays, Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company developed a uniquely skewed and seriously subversive comedic style and self-reflective sensibility that impacts today from South Park to the work of Tony Kushner, Paul Rudnick, Charles Busch, Mel Brooks, Kiki and Herb and John Waters. Ludlam, whose later works include some of the most masterful well-made plays since Sardou and Scribe, died in 1987 but his rich theatrical legacy and queer vision continue to conquer the universe even as worlds collide.

Joe E. Jeffreys
Project Dramaturg & Ridiculous Scholar