“Scummy” Acts: Valerie Solanas’s Theater of the Ludicrous

On May 10, 1965, a twenty-nine-year-old aspiring dramatist named Valerie Jean Solanas registered an unpublished one-act play with the US Copyright Office. Solanas called her satirical comedyUp Your Ass, but the official title listed on her application isFrom the Cradle to the Boat, or Up from the Slime. “[J]ust in case the play should ever become a Broadway smash hit,” the doggedly optimistic Solanas reasoned, “at least there would be something acceptable to put on the theater marquee.”¹ Indicative, in many ways, of the theatrical experimentation and countercultural expressions taking root during the mid-1960s, Solanas’s script is unique