dripping down his legs the whole time and everyone loved it. People loved this kind of visually confrontational theater. Vaccaro and Ludlam had different attitudes toward gayness and the theater. Ludlam talked about how the theatre had always been a refuge for gay people, and made clear that gay themes were important to his work. For Vaccaro, gayness was one theme among many that he used. Vaccaro made a distinction between theater people and gay people using the theater for camp and/or drag performances. Ludlam did object to being identified solely as a gay, female impersonator who produced works that were merely camp. Morris Meyer commented on Ludlam's ambivalence when discussing an interview he conducted with Ludlam: "During a subsequent run of Camille in 1974, he argued emphatically two seemingly contradictory positions for his production. He maintained that his rendering of Camille is not an expression of homosexuality and, at the same time, that it represents a form of coming out." Cross-gender performance was central to Ludlam's work. Ludlam discussed his role as the Emerald Empress in Bill Vehr's Whores of Babylon: Bill wrote this line in Whores of Babylon in which his character said to mine, "How well I understand that struggle in you between the warrior artist and the woman" – this was a wonderful self-revelation – and my line, he wrote, was "The woman? Don't you know there are a thousand women in me and I'm tormented by each one in turn? Cultural influence Theatre of the Ridiculous had a strong influence on 1970s culture. Elements of the genre can be seen in glam rock, disco, and in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The genre has also influenced more mainstream productions, such as Bat Boy, Urinetown, and Reefer Madness. Scott Miller cites the Play-House of the Ridiculous as a key source of "a performance style that only recently is becoming mainstream, a style described by Bat Boys original director and co-author Keythe Farley as 'the height of expression, the depth of sincerity,' a kind of outrageous but utterly truthful acting." Taylor Mac also credits Theatre of the Ridiculous as one of his professional influences. Concerning 1970s fashion, Childers has said: ... John Vaccaro used tons of glitter, that was his trademark. Everyone wore glitter. The whole cast was always covered in glitter. People had been wearing glitter for a long time and the drag queens were wearing