FEATURES
'and so his noise was ours too for those times' - On Ronald Tavel (1936 - 2009)
/ Jennifer Krasinski
04.24.09
Did black magic and a curse play a role in the death of Ronald Tavel – the Obie-winning playwright and Andy Warhol collaborator who mysteriously died aboard a Thailand-bound jet last week?1
So queried Page Six of the New York Post in an item headlined Satanic Scribe’s Eerie Death, which went on to enumerate the evidence in support of its sensational claim: Tavel’s alleged interest in the dark arts which lead to his writing a play on the subject of Satan and black magic; a production of the aforementioned play plagued by ill actors and falling scenery; a curse, followed by his ‘downward spiral’; a terrified flee from New York to Thailand, where he made his home for the last twelve years; and finally, his death of an apparent heart attack while on a plane flying home to Bangkok from Berlin on March 23rd.
"The moral is" playwright Larry Myers is quoted as saying of his friend’s story: "Watch what you write about."
A pulpy, near-parody of a “descent into darkness” B-movie (“Author Writes Own Ending!”), this weird elegy may be factually iffy, but is a fitting tribute of sorts to Ronald Tavel, the playwright, screenwriter, poet, novelist, essayist, raconteur and founding force behind the Theater of the Ridiculous who famously defined his canon in a single sentence: We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely preposterous. Over four decades, Tavel conceived, wrote, directed and occasionally performed in countless works for stage and screen, which included seminal collaborations with the likes of Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, and Charles Ludlam. With and without these co-conspirators, Tavel built a brilliant reputation for genre-bending works that satirized, queered, dismantled and disrobed popular American mythologies (cultural, political, religious, sexual and otherwise). His productions were known for their audacity, outrageousness and a general beyond-ness that has come to epitomize the off-off-Broadway avant-garde theater movement of the 1960s and 70s, and has designated Tavel an essential voice for those times – a man who absolutely watched what he wrote about.
Hollywood is a mythology all Americans can understand.2
So queried Page Six of the New York Post in an item headlined Satanic Scribe’s Eerie Death, which went on to enumerate the evidence in support of its sensational claim: Tavel’s alleged interest in the dark arts which lead to his writing a play on the subject of Satan and black magic; a production of the aforementioned play plagued by ill actors and falling scenery; a curse, followed by his ‘downward spiral’; a terrified flee from New York to Thailand, where he made his home for the last twelve years; and finally, his death of an apparent heart attack while on a plane flying home to Bangkok from Berlin on March 23rd.
"The moral is" playwright Larry Myers is quoted as saying of his friend’s story: "Watch what you write about."
A pulpy, near-parody of a “descent into darkness” B-movie (“Author Writes Own Ending!”), this weird elegy may be factually iffy, but is a fitting tribute of sorts to Ronald Tavel, the playwright, screenwriter, poet, novelist, essayist, raconteur and founding force behind the Theater of the Ridiculous who famously defined his canon in a single sentence: We have passed beyond the absurd: our position is absolutely preposterous. Over four decades, Tavel conceived, wrote, directed and occasionally performed in countless works for stage and screen, which included seminal collaborations with the likes of Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, and Charles Ludlam. With and without these co-conspirators, Tavel built a brilliant reputation for genre-bending works that satirized, queered, dismantled and disrobed popular American mythologies (cultural, political, religious, sexual and otherwise). His productions were known for their audacity, outrageousness and a general beyond-ness that has come to epitomize the off-off-Broadway avant-garde theater movement of the 1960s and 70s, and has designated Tavel an essential voice for those times – a man who absolutely watched what he wrote about.
Hollywood is a mythology all Americans can understand.2