RONALD TAVEL

Ronald Tavel - Self Portrait (ca. 1962)
(© Ronald Tavel)

"One of the greatest American playwrights. My favorite American writer."
(Michael Silverblatt, The Bookworm radio show syndicated on 40 U.S. stations)

Ronald Tavel died on Monday, March 23, 2009 while returning home to Bangkok from a planning session for the "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World" festival in Berlin which took place October 28 - November 1, 2009.

Tavel was traveling on a German airline from Muscat (Oman) to Bangkok with about 200 passengers on board when he became ill. The plane made an emergency landing at Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in India and Ron was declared dead at the airport after doctors examined him on landing at about 7:00 am (March 24th in India/March 23rd in the U.S.). The airport authorities issued a certificate and the same plane was allowed to take his body back to Bangkok. He was traveling alone at the time of his death.

Tavel was working on a new play, Cheap Jewelry: A Fruit Basket for Jack Smith, for the festival in Berlin. As a tribute to Ron, his play, The Life of Juanita Castro, was performed at the festival starring Mario Montez who made his first public appearance in three decades in honour of Ron. A memorial screening of his films is due to take place at the Anthology Film Archives in New York from December 10th to the 17th, with Callie Angell, the author of the Andy Warhol film catalogue raisonné, speaking on the first night of the series.

Tavel is survived by his brother, Harvey Tavel, and a large network of friends all over the world.

Ronald Tavel on the Hudson Pier in the mid-80s
from: http://www.ronald-tavel.com/grants.htm

The scenarios/scripts that Tavel for Warhol were Screen Test, Screen Test #2, Suicide, The Life of Juanita Castro, Horse, Vinyl, Kitchen, Space, Hedy, and the “Hanoi Hanna” and “Their Town” sequences of The Chelsea Girls. Screen Test #2, The Life of Juanita Castro, and Vinyl were also performed as stage plays as part of Tavel's "Theatre (or 'Play-House') of the Ridiculous." He won two Obie (Off-Broadway Theater) Awards - one in 1969 for a staged, musical, version of the "Their Town" segment from The Chelsea Girls (re-titled Boy on the Straight-Back Chair) and one in 1972 for his play Bigfoot. Actor Eddie McCarty also won a "Distinguished Performance" Obie award for his role in Tavel's Kitchenette performed at the Play-House in January/February 1967. Shortly before his death, Tavel had delivered to his agent in New York a new novel titled Chain.

Ron's last appearance in the U.K. was in 1999 when he introduced a film screening organised by Mark Webber. Many of the films he scripted for Warhol were included in the Hayward Gallery's recent "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" exhibition which ran from October 8, 2008 to January 11, 2009.

Ronald Tavel's website is at: www.ronald-tavel.com. Scroll down for press and tributes.

Warholstars Links

RONALD TAVEL AND ANDY WARHOL'S FACTORY

COMING TOGETHER TO STAY APART
(A lecture by Douglas Crimp on Tavel's scripts for Warhol)

CONQUEST OF THE RIDICULOUS:
RONALD TAVEL, JOHN VACCARO AND CHARLES LUDLAM

HARLOT

THE WARHOL/TAVEL SCREEN TESTS

KITCHEN

SPACE

Press/Obituaries

Letter from the Live Film! (jack smith) Festival

Joint Press Release from the Arsenal Institute and the Hebbel-am-ufer Theater

New York Times Obituary

Village Voice Obituary

New York Post

European Press

Lausitzer Rundschau

Augsburger Allgemeine

Deutschlandradio

Münsterländische Volkszeitung

Der Tagesspiegel

Handelsblatt

Saarbrücker Zeitung

Radio Orf

Far Eastern Economic Review

Il Manifesto

Artkey

Blogs/Tributes/Info

Vaginal Davis has mentioned Ron's death on her blog page at:
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/blog/2009_03_22_arc.html (scroll down).

Dennis Cooper, who had the same literary agent as Ron has mentioned his death on his blog page at:
http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2009/03/p_27.html.

Donald Brooks has mentioned Ron on his blog page at:
http://donaldlbrooks.blogspot.com/2009/03/ronald-tavel.html.

and on the Jahsonic blog page at:
http://jahsonic.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/rip-ronald-tavel/.

and a tribute from a new Tavel fan here.

An article about the Gob Squad's 2008 London production of Kitchen - based on the script that Tavel wrote for Warhol - can be found in Time Out (London) at:
http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/features/5153/Gob_Squad-s-Kitchen-at_the_Soho_Theatre.html.

The blurb from the Moderna Museet's "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" exhibition which includes Tavel's credits for some of the Warhol films can be found at:
http://www.modernamuseet.se/v4/templates/template3.asp?lang=Eng&id=3707&bhcp=1.

The same films were also shown as part of Hayward Gallery's "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" exhibition in London in 2008/9.

Descriptions in the Guardian of some of the films that Tavel scripted for Warhol when they were screened as part of the Warhol retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2002, including Horse ("Concocted by Warhol's brilliant writer Ronald Tavel"), Screen Test No. 2 ("an uninhibited, sadistic Tavel") and Space can be found at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/warhol/story/0,,641355,00.html.

A New York Times review of the 1986 production of Ronald Tavel's Notorious Harik Will Kill the Pope can be found at:
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=
9A0DE5D91630F93AA15752C0A960948260.

A New York Times review of the 1985 production of Tavel's My Foetus Lived on Amboy Street can be found at:
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?
res=9902E4D61F38F93BA15757C0A963948260.

A New York Times review of the 1983 production of Tavel's Success and Succession, can be found at:
http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?pagewanted=
print&res=9A06E2DD1E39F931A35751C1A965948260.

An excerpt from Tavel's previous book, Street of Stairs, can be found at:
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/60th/pdfs/18tavel.pdf.

Photos of Ronald Tavel from his Warhol days, taken by Billy Name, can be found here.

Photos of Ronald Tavel in Germany in 2001 on Vaginal Davis' website can be found at:
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/photos/germany.html (scroll down).