The Downtown Pop Underground

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Al Carmines served as the associate minister for the arts at Judson Memorial Church, where he wrote songs for plays that Judson produced in addition to giving sermons and other ministerial duties. [more]

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Father of Bibbe Hansen, Fluxus artist Al Hansen was an early Happenings innovator who was the first to publish a book about the subject, A Primer of Happenings and Time/Space Art, in 1965. [more]

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Like many artists who became part of 1960s avant-garde art movements, Allan Kaprow developed an expanded approach to painting, composition, poetry, and, eventually, performance—when he coined the term “Happenings.” [more]

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Ann Harris began collaborating with her six children in the early 1960s after her oldest son—an eleven-year-old soon-to-be Hibiscus—hatched the idea to start a family theater troupe after learning that his mother had written two plays in college that had moldered in a trunk for years; by the early 1970s, she was writing songs for Hibiscus and his sisters in the Angels of Light. [more]

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Daughter of artist Al Hansen, Bibbe Hansen was a regular at the Factory in the mid-1960s—where she co-starred with Edie Sedgwick in the 1965 Warhol film Prison and also appeared onstage as a go-go dancer at an early Velvet Underground show. [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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Experimental composer and theorist John Cage shared a studio at the Living Theatre with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he collaborated for performances at Judson Memorial Church and elsewhere. [more]

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Judith Malina was the cofounder of the Living Theatre, along with her husband Julian Beck, and they played key roles in the development of Off-Broadway during the 1950s and Off-Off-Broadway in the 1960s. [more]

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Choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham and his partner John Cage were closely involved in the overlapping downtown arts scenes, collaborating with their friend Robert Rauschenberg and others at Judson Memorial Church and the Living Theatre. [more]

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Tom O’Horgan was a multitalented director, musician, and choreographer who worked on dozens of shows at La MaMa before hitting the bigtime as the director of the Broadway musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, though he continued to return to La MaMa after his mainstream success. [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]