The Downtown Pop Underground

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Agosto Machado was a Chinese-Spanish Christopher Street queen and Zelig-like figure who witnessed the rise of the underground theater and film movements, the 1960s counterculture, gay liberation, and punk rock. [more]

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Andy Milligan directed some of the earliest shows at Caffe Cino and La MaMa, and later went on to make trashy, low-budget movies such as The Ghastly Ones, Vapors, Seeds of Sin, The Body Beneath, The Man with Two Heads, and Torture Dungeon. [more]

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Best known for his Pop Art silkscreened work, Andy Warhol was a key connector figure who circulated not only through uptown art circles, but also within the underground film, poetry, theater, and music scenes. [more]

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Bette Midler was cast in the 1965 La MaMa production of Tom Eyen’s Miss Nefertiti Regrets at the age of 18, and later performed a cabaret act at gay bathhouses with with pianist Barry Manilow (who also sometimes performed at Caffe Cino). [more]

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Playwright Edward Albee, best known for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, helped support the Off-Off-Broadway venue Caffe Cino by throwing benefits after it caught fire. [more]

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Eloise Harris, the fifth child of the Harris family, got her Equity card at the age of nine performing in Invitation to a Beheading at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and later joined her brother Hibiscus in the Angels of Light. [more]

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Dancer Freddie Herko was part of the Judson Dance Theater and was a friend of Diane di Prima before committing suicide by pirouetting from a four-story window on Cornelia Street, a few doors down from Caffe Cino. [more]

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George Harris, Jr. was married to Ann Harris, and together they raised six children who were all involved in theater at Caffe Cino, La MaMa, and Judson Church. [more]

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Poet Gerard Malanga became part of the Factory scene after being hired as Andy Warhol’s screen-printing assistant; he could also be seen wielding a whip while dancing to the Velvet Underground in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia series, and costarring with Mary Woronov in Vinyl at Caffe Cino. [more]

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Haralambos Monroe “Harry” Koutoukas was an outré playwright with a kaleidoscopic way with words, whose plays were presented at many of the key Off-Off-Broadway venues: Caffe Cino, La MaMa, Theatre Genesis, and Judson Poets’ Theatre. [more]

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Hibiscus was a gender-fluid performer and founder of the psychedelic drag troupes the Cockettes and Angels of Light who was among the very first who succumbed to the AIDS epidemic, in 1982. [more]

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Jacque Lynn Colton often performed at Caffe Cino, Judson Memorial Church, and La MaMa; she was also among the first to tour Europe as part of the emerging La MaMa Repertory Company, expanding the downtown diaspora’s reach. [more]

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Jayne Anne Harris, the oldest of the Harris sisters, appeared in the Judson production Sing Ho for a Bear, an adaptation of Winnie-the-Pooh, among many other productions; in the early 1970s, she joined Hibiscus’s Angels of Light. [more]

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The actor, activist, and scenester Jim Fouratt was a regular at Caffe Cino, Max’s Kansas City, and other downtown hangouts; in addition to cofounding the Yippies, he witnessed the Stonewall Rebellion firsthand and later managed Studio 54 and Danceteria. [more]

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A gay coffeehouse proprietor named Joe Cino helped spark the Off-Off-Broadway scene after he opened the doors of his coffeehouse to oddball playwrights and nonconformists of all stripes; in 1967, he committed suicide inside the café by stabbing himself to death. [more]

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Caffe Cino lighting genius Johnny Dodd also lit other Off-Off-Broadway venues such as Judson Memorial Church, changing the direction of theater lighting; dancer Freddie Herko committed suicide from the window of the apartment Dodd shared with Michael Smith. [more]

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Landford Wilson’s The Madness of Lady Bright featured an openly gay main character—the first play of many written by the Caffe Cino regular, who developed into a major American playwright and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, among many other honors. [more]

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The youngest of the Harris family siblings, Mary Lou Harris appeared in several Off-Off-Broadway productions in the 1960s before teaming up with her sisters and brother Hibiscus to form the Angels of Light. [more]

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Playwright and Village Voice theater critic Michael Smith championed the Off-Off-Broadway scene and print when he wasn’t directing and writing plays, and later running Caffe Cino after Joe Cino’s suicide. [more]

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Playwright Robert Heide presented his plays at Caffe Cino and elsewhere downtown, where he eventually met Andy Warhol, who enlisted him to write dialogue for his films (footage Warhol shot of Heide’s Caffe Cino play The Bed was incorporated in The Chelsea Girls). [more]

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Robert Patrick was a Caffe Cino regular who began hanging out there in 1961, an immersion that led him to become a prolific playwright with boundless energy; after Caffe Cino closed in 1968 he moved over to the Old Reliable, a dive bar and Off-Off-Broadway theater venue on the Lower East Side. [more]

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When he was part of the Warhol crowd, Soren Agenoux wrote a twisted version of A Christmas Carol that debuted at Caffe Cino in 1966 and later could be seen in the reality television series An American Family as Lance Loud’s roommate in the Chelsea Hotel. [more]

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Writer and theorist Susan Sontag famously used drag and camp to think through the relationship between performance, artifice, and sexuality—something that was partially inspired by Caffe Cino’s outrageous shows and free-thinking atmosphere. [more]

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Before he co-created the hit Broadway musical Dreamgirls, Tom Eyen had more humble beginnings at Caffe Cino and La MaMa, which presented his Off-Off-Broadway hit Frustrata, or the Dirty Little Girl with the Red Paper Rose Stuck in Her Head Is Demented. [more]

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Walter Michael Harris was the second child of the Harris family, the younger brother of Hibiscus (born George Harris III, aka G3), and was the youngest cast member in the Broadway debut of Hair. [more]