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THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP 125
of heterosexual tropes but is not subsumed by them; it maintains its lesbian stance.
Shaw and Weaver work through some extraordinary nonheterogendered
postitionalities within a butch-femme representational economy. Voyage to Lesbos,
on the other hand, is obsessively concerned with heterosexuality in a failed attempt
to critique it. Without much of a leap, it could be read as a play about lesbian
“penis envy.”
6 I saw the original production in the Spring of 1973 at the 13th Street Theatre in
New York City, as well as every subsequent revival of it. Readers familiar with the
experimental theatre scene in those days will appreciate the following anecdote:
When I interviewed Ludlam in the Fall of 1974, I mentioned to him that the Living
Theatre’s Julian Beck and Judith. Malina were in the audience the first time I saw
Camille and that I was struck by their stoicism in the face of such high comedy.
Ludlam responded, “Oh, but they came backstage afterward and said that they
loved it; they just thought it was irrelevant, that it had nothing to do with reality.”
For a reading of Ludlam’s Camille that is quite different from mine see Brecht 88–
93.
7 Gottfried 1974; and Barnes 1974. These reviews are from the first revival of
Camille in the Spring of 1974. The original production opened in the Spring of
1973. Both reviews were obtained from the files of the Ridiculous Theatrical
Company.
8 I am grateful to Laurence Senelick for bringing this citation to my attention.
9 See Davy 1989.
10 I saw the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre’s production in the Stiemke Theatre in
September 1989, as well as Ludlam’s original production in his theatre at One
Sheridan Square in New York in November 1984.
11 See Joslyn. A review also appeared on the same day in the evening paper: Jacques.
In this review, Jacques conflated Camp with drag and then used “camp,”
“campiness,” and “high camp” to describe what he saw.
12 Personal interview with Charles Ludlam, New York City, 13 October 1974. Before
beginning the interview, I asked Ludlam to say something to be sure the recorder was
picking up his voice. Hence, the first words on the tape are “This is Charles Ludlam
speaking for posterity.” He died of AIDS on 28 May 1987. All subsequent
quotations are from this interview and do not carry page number references.
13 Susan Sontag’s enormously influential “Notes on Camp” (1964) strikes me as
exemplary of benign assimilation. She nearly edits homosexuals out of Camp and
deems it a fundamentally apolitical phenomenon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ackroyd, Peter. 1979. Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
Barnes, Clive. 1974. “Stage: An Oddly Touching ‘Camille’.” The New York Times 14
May: 31.
Barthes, Roland. 1982. Empire of Signs. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and
Wang.
Bartlett, Neil. 1990. “Just Ridiculous.” American Theatre 7/1:50–51.
Brecht, Stefan. 1978. Queer Theatre. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.