Ryan Landry is Ryan Landry.
He was born in Lynwood, California in 1961, abandoned by his birth mother before he was two and raised by an estranged Aunt and Uncle in a converted chicken coop outside Durham, Connecticut until the family moved to yet another abusive home in Wallingford, Connecticut.
That year was 1971.
By 1976, Landry, already “colorful” ran away to New York City in search of sex, drugs and rock and roll.
He found them all and as a result soon became a full time drug addict and prostitute.
He was 15.
PROVINCETOWN:
By 1979, the year Landry arrived in Provincetown, all bets were off considering a return to any sort of “normal” life.
He had now devoted himself entirely to living outside society.
Soon he’d begun appearing in drag for the simple reason that a local venue was offering a hundred dollar prize every week for best act and he planned to live off that prize for the entire summer.
Simple drag numbers soon turned into fully formed “skits”, complete with cardboard sets and Barbie doll “extras” to represent a cinematic sort of feel in live performance. “I wanted the audience to feel as if they were watching a live movie and the Barbies were there to show the camera pulling back from the action as if the dolls were people in the distance”.
After winning the drag contest one too many times and asked to “take a break”, Landry began moving his skits into other clubs, making them a feature at the end of the night. “The skits came right before the last song.” Landry says. “Just little five minute comedy things.” Things like “Here Lies Lucy” where Lucy was played by a plastic, talking skull ala Hamlet. “That was the beginning of my club promotion days” Landry says. “We were called “House of Superstar” and we were not only freaks but the freakiest freaks. The ones who refused to behave like other gays. We wanted our own world, our own reality and we created it every night for ourselves.”
Soon Landry had developed a sort of Warholian “factory” of local celebrities who, like Landry himself, would do just about anything on stage.
This “balls to the wall” approach proved successful and soon people were turning out in record numbers to see what madness Landry's gang had in store on any given night. Or day for that matter. “We started making little movies in the afternoon, walking around town in crazy outfits, dressing up like bearded southern belles or drunken gay vampires or simply suburban housewives out for a day of shopping." Playing up the comedy while playing down the glamour, Landry rejected the popular yet precious sequined side of drag and instead pursued the absurd, all the while turning Provincetown into a sort of mini Hollywood and making his gang of beloved misfits its outlaw stars. "It was all just a goof. We didn't want to dress up like Marilyn and coo out dumb, "sexy" phrases. We didn't give a shit about Diana Ross. We wanted to dress like Queen Elizabeth and have her reciting cookie recipes while sitting on a toilet. Sure we would impersonate Judy, Liza, Bette et al. But we would turn them all into serial killers and dope smugglers.”
By this time the local drag show where Landry first got his start had fizzled out. He and his friends had already moved on and people soon became bored with a never ending stream of overly sincere Barbra Streisands.
It was then that Landry decided to start his own weekly drag competition, featuring his company's own ridiculous style and overall goofy philosophy.
Thus began the longest running show in Provincetown history, “SHOWGIRLS”.
THEATRE/PERFORMANCE:
The end of every summer often meant a hungry winter and so each year, from Halloween through April Fools Day, Landry found himself back in New York. After meeting acclaimed playwright, Charles Ludlam in a West Village coffee shop and subsequently attending nearly all of Ludlam’s shows on a nightly basis, Landry fell in love with the theatre and eventually joined the famed Ridiculous Theatrical Company as a performer for a brief period shortly after Ludlam’s death in 1987.
Soon after, Landry added himself to the roster of the Pyramid Club, a highly regarded laboratory-like performance art venue located in the heart of the East Village. Landry’s speciality was jumping through flaming hoops dressed as the “Flying Nun” and was paid a whopping $20 a show until he mistakingly set the club on fire and was asked to leave.
By 1993, Landry left the flat broke hassle of New York for the coke covered promise of Miami.
Having had enough of sex and drugs and looking for more rock and roll, Landry soon formed the popular rock band “Space Pussy” and toured with the group as lead singer/songwriter until 1996 when he took a short break from music to become the sole playwright for (you guessed it) “The Greatest Little Theatrical Company since the Last Supper” aka the legendary Gold Dust Orphans.
Twenty five years and seventy nine plays and musicals later, Landry is still going strong, winning numerous awards for his stage work including the esteemed “Elliot Norton Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre”.
His productions of “Psyched” (a take on Hitchcock’s “Psycho”) and “Ryan Landry’s M”, (a surreal, psychological thriller) were both produced by the nationally recognized Huntington Theatre and he has often appeared as a featured guest performer at the wonderful Ogunquit Playhouse. Landry currently stars as a regular, (joining hosts, Jim Braude and Margery Egan) on the award winning NPR radio program, “Boston Public Radio” in a segment entitled, "You Get The Picture".
PAINTING:
Landry has studied and shown at the following institutions as a student.
School of Visual Arts, Manhattan, New York
Art Student League, Manhattan, New York
New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, New Orleans
Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown
Landry started painting full time to avoid depression when he was forced to quarantine in February, 2020 for fear that his H.I.V positive status might further compromise his health during the still early stages of the pandemic.
He now paints 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, working only with oils on canvas and he will continue to paint until this evil bitch known as “Covid 19” is fucking crushed and destroyed.
After that … who knows?
Landry is a full time resident of both Provincetown and New Orleans.
He is happily married to actor/artist Scott Martino and together they share two beautiful dogs and a shitload of Orphan children and grandchildren.
He loves them all.
x