Everett Quinton dies: Pioneer of downtown NYC theater and champion of the ridiculous turns 71

Everett Quinton, a fixture of the post-1960s New York theater scene and avid standard-bearer for the outrageously campy and hilarious melodramatic performance style known as The Ridiculous, died of glioblastoma on Jan. 23 in Brooklyn. He turned 71.

The death of the actor and director has been confirmed The New York Times by friend Julia Campanelli on behalf of his sister Mary Ann Quinton.

With his life and art partner, the actor, playwright and director Charles Ludlam, he first made a name for himself in the theater world of Off (and Off Off) Broadway. by Ludlam in 1967.

Quinton and Ludlam met in the mid-1970s and remained together until Ludlam died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987. the 1970s, 1980s and, with Quinton after Ludlam’s death, the early 1990s.

by Ludlam chamomile was one of the most famous, but the duo’s biggest success was probably in 1984 with Ludlams The secret of Irma Vep, a terrifying spoof in which Quinton and Ludlam played the characters from a crime novel and quickly switched from one drag style – male or female – to another. Criticism Frank Rijk from The New York Times wrote it with the show “Mr Ludlam and Mr Quinton have elevated the ridiculous to the sublime.’

After Ludlam’s death, Quinton took over the management of the Ridiculous until he closed Sheridan Square in 1997, to the continued annoyance of his loyal followers. While his closest band would forever be The Ridiculous, Quinton performed elsewhere, including La MaMa, and even the occasional screen. He had an early role in a 1985 episode Miami Vice as, according to the credits, “Homosexual Pusher” and played an assistant principal in Oliver Stone’s 1994 psycho epic natural killers.

His last screen credit came last year as the character Melvin Funk brothershailed the Billy Eichner film as the first mainstream gay rom-com to play in theaters that would dwarf the tiny halls of the Ridiculous pioneered by Quinton.