Événement

The Grand Guignol: An illustrated Lecture and Book Launch with Mel Gordon

Date: Thursday, August 25th
Time: 7pm
Admission: $8
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn NY
*** Books will be sale and signing

From 1897 until its sudden closure in 1962, The Theatre du Grand Guignol was one of Paris most popular and celebrated attractions. Devoted to ghastly scenic effects and monstrous plot turns, the Grand Guignol provided early Hollywood with novel techniques and source material for all of its horror genres and psychological thrillers. Anaïs Nin immortalized the Grand Guignol, declaring that "all our nightmares of sadism and perversion were played out on that stage."

Tonight, join us as we celebrate the republication of Mel Gordon's long out-of-print The Grand Guignol: the Theatre of Fear and Terror with an illustrated lecture featuring new pictorials and cinematic shorts. Attendees will also have the chance to purchase (and have signed!) copies of this new expanded edition, with additional text and images including a color insert of Grand Guignol posters; the 1938 autobiographical account of Maxa, the companys leading female performer entitled I Am the Maddest Woman in the World; and the controversial playscript Orgy in the Lighthouse.

Mel Gordon is the author of Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitlers Jewish Clairvoyant,Grand Guiginol: Theatre of Fear and Terror, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, and many other books.Voluptuous Panic was the first in-depth and illustrated book on the topic of erotic Weimar; The lavish tome was praised by academics and inspired the establishment of eight neo-Weimar nightclubs as well as the Dresden Dolls and a Marilyn Manson album. He also teaches directing, acting, and history of theater at University of California at Berkeley.