Martin Worman Collection

Martin Worman (1945- 1993) was an actor, playwright, lyricist, director, female impersonator, activist and academic, who worked primarily in San Francisco and New York from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. After serving in the United States Army from 1967 to 1968, Worman moved to San Francisco where he joined a cross-dressing improvisational theatre troupe called The Cockettes in July of 1970.
The Cockettes had formed on New Years Eve, 1969 when a group of hippies dressed in drag, lead by Hibiscus (George Harris, a young actor/model) offered to perform an opening act at San Francisco's Palace Theatre in exchange for free tickets to see the movie. The Cockettes were a success, eventually becoming the principal draw to the Palace. By the end of 1970, Hibiscus and several followers left to form their own group, the Angels of Light. The remaining Cockettes went on to produce more shows, with Worman writing scripts for sketches and song lyrics. Their popularity grew, culminating in a one month engagement in New York, at the Anderson Theatre in the East Village in November 1971. Back in San Francisco, The Cockettes performed several more shows, including A Journey to the Center of Uranus, with special guest star, Divine, Hot Greeks, Pearls Over Shanghai and L'Etoiles de Paris. By the autumn of 1972 the group dissolved.
In 1979 Worman moved to New York where he worked as assistant director and director for various theatrical shows. While living in New York, Worman attended New York University for a doctorate in Performance Studies. He also taught at NYU in the late 1980s and early 1990s and then worked as an assistant professor of drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1992 he was hired to develop a regional theater company at Antioch College. Worman died in 1993.