The most embarassing sit-down reading I've ever attended

If you all haven't been reading the comments to my entry on the worst and/or most embarassing plays I've ever seen, in which other people recount their experiences with same, you are missing the best part. "I still have no idea why the Duke in Measure for Measure was four vampires."

This tale, like the one about Delbert's masturbation monologue, concerns a play that was not incompetent, but rather embarassing, over-the-top, pretentious, and ostentatiously shocking. But this one requires background.

When I was getting my MFA in playwriting at UCLA, I and the other six students in my class took a seminar on playwriting from the legendary professor Leon Katz. (ETA: Added link to his website. Please do not e-mail him with a link to this post...) Leon was a majesterial gentleman with a deep voice and a white beard, rather like King Lear. He was brilliant and famous and avant-garde. One day in class he began telling us about the most profound theatrical experience he had ever had.

"It was in the sixties, of course," he said. He went on to describe what struck me as a pretentious, touchy-feely, anti-war, hippie play. It sounded awful. But Leon was obviously deeply moved by the memory, and the class was very small-- ten or twelve of us sitting around a table-- so we all sat in respectful silence. "And at the end, the actors all stripped naked. And, in a gesture of solidarity, so did the audience. And then we all left the theatre together, and marched out into the New York streets, stark naked."

"HAW-HAW-HAW!" The laugh exploded out of me like a small bomb, entirely without my consent.

Leon turned on me. Leaning across the table, he hissed, "You post-Reaganite philistine, you make me sick!"

I forget what happened then, but I think I may have had to leave the room to recover, as I am prone to hysterical laughter. I do remember that I was utterly unable to make any response to Leon other than gulp snarf!

This incident became legendary in the theatre department. Years later people were still saying to me, "Oh, so you're the post-Reaganite philistine."

Anyway, toward the end of the seminar, Leon invited us all to a staged reading of a play he had written. It was called Swellfoot's Tears, and it was a re-telling of Oedipus Rex set in a concentration camp. Because otherwise it would be too cheerful, I guess.

We all showed up at the now-defunct bookshop Midnight Special for the reading, which was held in a back room with no door. That is, it was totally open to the rest of the bookshop, and any browsers in the back could see and hear the entire play.

Leon was reading the stage directions. In his grand voice and with great relish, he declaimed, "Center stage is a ten-foot pillar of shit that drips blood."

I realized then that this was going to be another exercise in stifling the hysterical cackles that longed to emerge.

Leon continued, "Enter Big Pink Cunt."

For a moment I thought that was a prop, but when the actress began to speak, I realized that it was her name. The characters all had names like that, resulting in lines like, "Hey Big Pink Cunt, bring me Jack Off In My Ass!"

Then followed two hours of abuse, degradation, violence, misery, and shit that dripped blood. The audience squirmed. The actors, however, appeared to be having a great time. I don't think I've ever heard actors project so well. Innocent bookstore patrons kept drifting toward the back, whereupon they would either flee instantly in horror, or else hang about for five minutes in incredulity, then get bored and drift away.

I have always wondered if that play ever got a professional production. If so, I bet the stage manager just hated having to deal with the shit that dripped blood.