The Downtown Pop Underground

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Best known for his Pop Art silkscreened work, Andy Warhol was a key connector figure who circulated not only through uptown art circles, but also within the underground film, poetry, theater, and music scenes. [more]

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Born James Slattery, Candy Darling grew up in Massapequa Park, Long Island and moved to New York in the mid-1960s, where she became part of the street scene—eventually befriending Jackie Curtis, with whom she appeared in Warhol films. [more]

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Playwright and performer Charles Ludlam briefly worked with John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous before forming his own Ridiculous Theatrical Company and mounting his breakthrough play, Bluebeard, at La MaMa. [more]

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Longtime Village resident Chris Kapp was a performer in Hot Peaches and the Play-House of the Ridiculous, and was also the long-time director of “Coffeehouse Chronicles” at La MaMa. [more]

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Before becoming the New York Dolls’ frontman, David Johansen worked at a variety of downtown establishments—including a St. Mark’s clothing store that provided costumes for Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Max’s Kansas City. [more]

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In the late 1960s, Debbie Harry sang backup vocals in a short-lived hippie band named Wind in the Willows, then quit the group and worked as a waitress at Max’s Kansas City before joining the Stilettoes and eventually cofounding Blondie with Chris Stein. [more]

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Actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein had his La MaMa debut in the 1971 Warhol play Pork well before winning two Tony Awards for writing and starring in Torch Song Trilogy. [more]

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Holly Woodlawn appeared with Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis in many Warhol films, on cabaret stages, and in underground theater productions, and was name-checked in the opening lines of Lou Reed’s classic song “Walk On the Wild Side” and appeared briefly in An American Family. [more]

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The playwright and performer Jackie Curtis was a working class Lower East Side native who was raised by his grandmother, “Slugger Ann,” the proprietor of a rough East Village bar named Slugger Ann’s. [more]

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Wayne County—who transitioned to Jayne County by the end of the 1970s—fronted several glam and punk groups throughout that decade: Queen Elizabeth, The Electric Chairs, and The Backstreet Boys (whose name was unwittingly ripped off by a 1990s boy band). [more]

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John Vaccaro was the mercurial director who orchestrated the Play-House of the Ridiculous, whose shows were unrelenting explosions of color, glitter, and noise underscored by social satire. [more]

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Film director John Waters often visited New York City as a young man—watching performances and films by Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous, which deeply influenced the trash cinema auteur. [more]

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Before starring in several Warhol films and Off-Off-Broadway plays, Mario Montez first appeared in Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and was named after Smith’s favorite 1940s starlet, Maria Montez. [more]

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The Chelsea Girls actress Mary Woronov began hanging around the Factory around the time the Velvet Underground joined forces with Andy Warhol to produce the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured Woronov and Gerard Malanga as dancers. [more]

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Actor Michael Arian joined the Play-House of the Ridiculous, where he worked with director John Vaccaro for many years and met Ruby Lynn Reyner, whose band Ruby and the Rednecks featured Arian as a backup vocalist. [more]

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Born Robert Olivo, Ondine acted in Play-House of the Ridiculous plays and appeared in more Warhol footage than anyone (because of his acid tongue and ability to talk for hours, days even, while taking speed), landing memorable roles in The Chelsea Girls and other Warhol films. [more]

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Peter Crowley worked at the Living Theatre well over a decade before he began booking the Ramones, Blondie, and other punk bands at Max’s Kansas City; in both venues, he witnessed the dissolution of barriers that separated audiences from performers. [more]

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Playwright Ronald Tavel was a friend of Jack Smith who worked on Flaming Creatures and wrote scenarios for Warhol’s mid-1960s films, then collaborated with John Vaccaro to form the Play-House of the Ridiculous before working with the Judson Poets’ Theatre to do his play Gorilla Queen. [more]

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Simeon Coxe was the keyboardist in Silver Apples, which regularly performed in Max’s second-floor room starting in 1968 and also performed as the accompanying musical act in the La MaMa production of the Play-House of the Ridiculous’s Cock-Strong. [more]

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Tony Ingrassia was larger-than-life figure who directed several Off-Off-Broadway plays, including Andy Warhol’s Pork, Wayne County’s World: Birth of a Nation, Jackie Curtis’s Femme Fatale, and Island (the latter two featured Patti Smith in acting roles). [more]

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Off-Off-Broadway actor Tony Zanetta played the Andy Warhol character in Pork; when he and the cast performed in London, he befriended David Bowie and became president of his management company, Main Man, during the Ziggy Stardust era. [more]