MAY 26–29, 2022
Directed by
​Becca Johnson-Spinos
Based on Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century by GREIL MARCUS

​Lipstick Traces was originally created and produced by Rude Mechs
The world premiere production took place in Austin, TX at The Off Center in 2000

1534: John of Leyden proclaims himself the Favorite of Heaven, runs naked through the streets of Munster, Germany, and forms a society free of laws or private property.
​1976: John Lydon proclaims himself an “antichrist,” helps launch a movement to ‘destroy passersby,’ and permanently changes popular culture. Coincidence?
A Narrator with a Ph.D. joins Sex Pistols’ manager and self-proclaimed mastermind, Malcolm McLaren, to recount an alternative history of the 20th century via the Sex Pistols, the Cabaret Voltaire, the May ’68 riots, and a handful of medieval heretics. Lipstick Traces is a physically ecstatic and intellectually nervy theatrical vision of “movements in culture that raised no monuments… movements that barely left a trace.”