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.”