Ronald Tavel
Coming Together to Stay Apart - Conquest of The Ridiculous: Ronald Tavel, John Vaccarro and Charles Ludlam - The Warhol/Tavel Screen Tests - Kitchen - Space - Joint Press Release from the Arsenal Institute and the Hebbel-am-ufer Theater - Letter from the Live Film! (jack smith) Festival
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.
In 2015 Fast Books Press posthumously published Ronald Tavel's account of working with Andy Warhol as Warhol's screenwriter with the title Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays.
His death was reported on Web India as follows:
At the time of his death Tavel was working on a new play, Cheap Jewellery: A Fruit Basket for Jack Smith, for the festival in Berlin. After his death, his play The Life of Juanita Castro, was performed at the festival as a tribute to him. Mario Montez came out of retirement to perform in the play in honour of Ron.
Ronald Tavel (Screen Test (1964))
Press/Obituaries
Letter from the Live Film! (jack smith) Festival
Joint Press Release from the Arsenal Institute and the Hebbel-am-ufer Theater
News of Ron's death also appeared in a number of international newspapers and radio: 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 mentioned Ron's death on her blog page here. (Scroll down)
Dennis Cooper, who had the same literary agent as Ron, mentioned his death on his blog page here. (Dennis Cooper's blog was later removed)
Donald Brooks mentioned Ron on his blog page here.
A tribute from a new Tavel fan here
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).
The blurb from the Moderna Museet's "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" exhibition includes Tavel's credits for some of the Warhol films.
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 here.
A New York Times review of the 1986 production of Ronald Tavel's Notorious Harik Will Kill the Pope.
A New York Times review of the 1985 production of Tavel's My Foetus Lived on Amboy Street.
A New York Times review of the 1983 production of Tavel's Success and Succession.
An excerpt from Tavel's previous book, Street of Stairs.
Photos of Ronald Tavel in Germany in 2001 on Vaginal Davis' website can be found here. (Scroll down).
5 November 2015: You are so missed.
18 April 2022: Hey Ron. Was just updating your page and thinking about you. How long has it been? What a wonderful person you were. It seems like yesterday that we were corresponding regularly. How I hate the passage of time. Wish you were still around. love always g.