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Black-Eyed Susan (born Susan Carlson) is an American actress based in New York City, New York.
She has worked primarily in Off-Off-Broadway theater with artists including Charles Ludlam, Ethyl Eichelberger, Mabou Mines, John Jesurun, Jim Neu, Lola Pashalinski, and Taylor Mac.
Carlson was born in Shelton, Connecticut.
She studied theater for one year at Emerson College, then transferred to Hofstra University, where she completed her degree.
While at Hofstra, she met fellow student, Charles Ludlam, who cast her in one of his early plays. After finishing college, she moved to Manhattan.
In 1967, she was in rehearsals for a Theatre of the Ridiculous production directed by John Vaccaro and written by Ludlam. During rehearsals, Vacarro and Ludlam had a disagreement which led Ludlam to leave the company and began his own, which he called the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Its first production was called When Queens Collide. Black-Eyed Susan became a long-time friend, collaborator, and actor in Ludlam's work for the following two decades. [1]
During her time working with Ludlam, she met and began to collaborate with Ethyl Eichelberger. [2] Eichelberger wrote the play Saint Joan for Black-Eyed Susan following Ludlam's death in 1987. [3]
Black-Eyed Susan performed in numerous productions at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. In 1970, she was in Bluebeard, directed at La MaMa by Ludlam and performed by his Ridiculous Theatrical Company. [4] She was the narrator in Eichelberger's Phedre and Oedipus at La MaMa in 1977. [5] She was in Jesurun's Red House at La MaMa in 1984 [6] and his Deep Sleep at La MaMa in 1986, [7] performing alongside Steve Buscemi in both productions. She was in Jesurun's Black Maria at La MaMa in 1987. [8]
She acted in the 1987 film Ironweed , but has always preferred theatre acting.
In 1989, Stuart Sherman made a short film about her titled Black-Eyed Susan: Portrait of an Actress. [9] In 2014, she received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Charles Braun Ludlam was an American actor, director, and playwright.
Ethyl Eichelberger was an Obie award-winning American drag performer, playwright, and actor. He became an influential figure in experimental theater and writing, and wrote nearly forty plays portraying women such as Jocasta, Medea, Nefertiti, Clytemnestra, and Lucrezia Borgia. He became more widely known as a commercial actor in the 1980s.
Theatre of the Ridiculous is a theatrical genre that began in New York City in the 1960s.
Mary Alice Smith, known professionally as Mary Alice, was an American television, film, and stage actress. Alice was known for her roles as Leticia "Lettie" Bostic on the sitcom A Different World (1987–1989) and Effie Williams in the 1976 musical drama Sparkle, and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her recurring role on the series I'll Fly Away. Alice also performed on the stage, and received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her appearance in the 1987 production of August Wilson's Fences.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is an all-male drag ballet troupe that parodies the conventions of romantic and classical ballet. The company's current artistic director is Tory Dobrin.
The Mystery of Irma Vep is a play in three acts by Charles Ludlam. It is a satire of several theatrical, literary and film genres, including Victorian melodrama, farce, the penny dreadful, Wuthering Heights and the Alfred Hitchcock film Rebecca (1940). The title refers to the name of a character in the 1915 French movie serial Les Vampires and is an anagram of the word "vampire."
Ellen Stewart was an American theatre director and producer and the founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. During the 1950s, she worked as a fashion designer for Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel.
René Rivera,, known professionally as Mario Montez, was one of the Warhol superstars, appearing in thirteen of Andy Warhol's underground films from 1964 to 1966. He took his name as a male homage to the actress Maria Montez, an important gay icon in the 1950s and 1960s. Before appearing in Warhol's films, he appeared in Jack Smith's underground films Flaming Creatures and Normal Love. Montez also stars in the Ron Rice film Chumlum, made in 1964. Mario Montez, was "a staple in the New York underground scene of the 1960s and '70s."
The Gospel at Colonus is an African-American musical version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in 1983 by the experimental-theatre director Lee Breuer, one of the founders of the seminal American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, and composer Bob Telson. The musical was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show had a brief run on Broadway in 1988.
Elizabeth Swados was an American writer, composer, musician, choreographer, and theatre director. Swados received Tony Award nominations for Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Choreography. She was nominated for Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Director of a Musical, Outstanding Lyrics, and Outstanding Music, and won an Obie Award for her direction of Runaways in 1978. In 1980, the Hobart and William Smith Colleges awarded her an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters.
Helen Hanft was an American actress.
Jeffrey Weiss was an American playwright, impresario, and actor, both on Broadway and a theater he ran with partner Ricardo Martinez in the East Village, Manhattan.
Stuart A. Sherman was an American performance artist, playwright, filmmaker, videographer, poet, essayist, sculptor and collagist.
Trafford Tanzi is a play by Clare Luckham. It was originally performed as Tuebrook Tanzi, The Venus Flytrap by the Everyman Theatre Company in Liverpool in 1978 before moving to Manchester as Trafford Tanzi in 1980, later achieving commercial success in London.
Stage Blood is a comedy by Charles Ludlam, a spoof in which events taking place in the life of a third-rate theater company, touring Shakespeare's Hamlet, loosely mirror the plot of Hamlet itself. The cast was headed by Ridiculous Theatrical Company veterans Black-Eyed Susan, Lola Pashalinski, Bill Vehr, Jack Mallory, John D. Brockmeyer and Ludlam himself, who played the dual roles of actor Carleton Stone Jr. and Hamlet. It opened off-Broadway at the Evergreen Theatre on December 8, 1974, where it played 45 performances. It was revived at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre on July 1, 1977, and again at the Charles Ludlam Theatre on May 24, 1978.
Leandro Katz is an Argentine-born writer, visual artist and filmmaker known primarily for his films and photographic installations. His works include long-term, multi-media projects that delve into Latin American history through a combination of scholarly research, anthropology, photography, moving images and printed texts.
John Edward Heys is an American independent filmmaker, actor and writer who lives and works in Berlin.
Sheila Dabney is an American actress, best known for her co-starring role in the 1987 lesbian feminist film She Must Be Seeing Things alongside Lois Weaver and directed by Sheila McLaughlin.
Anthony J. Ingrassia, better known as Tony Ingrassia, was an American director, producer, and playwright whose works were produced on Broadway, Off Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and internationally.
Lola Pashalinski is an American theatre artist known for her work as a founding member of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company.